Subtest III: Physical Education - Motor Development, Fitness Components, and Teaching Practice
Subtest III Physical Education tests movement skill development, health-related and skill-related fitness, principles of training, assessment, and the management of safe, inclusive activity. Expect questions framed as classroom decisions: what to teach, how to sequence it, how to measure it, and how to adapt it.
Motor development and learning
- Fundamental movement skills: locomotor (walk, run, jump, hop, skip, gallop, slide, leap), stability/nonlocomotor (balance, bend, twist, turn, sway), and manipulative (throw, catch, kick, strike, dribble).
- Motor learning stages: cognitive (lots of errors, needs cues), associative (refining, less error), autonomous (automatic, attention free). Give cue words and short demonstrations early, refine with feedback later.
Fitness components
- Health-related: cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body composition.
- Skill-related: agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time, speed.
- FITT: Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type. Training principles: overload, progression, specificity, reversibility.
Worked example. A 16-year-old asks what intensity to target. Estimated maximum heart rate = 220 − 16 = 204 bpm. The 60–80% training zone is 0.60 × 204 = 122 to 0.80 × 204 = 163 bpm. Applying FITT: jogging three to five days per week (frequency), within 122–163 bpm (intensity), 20–30 continuous minutes (time), running or brisk walking (type). Note the formula is a population estimate, so a student on beta blockers or with a heart condition needs a physician's guidance rather than the age formula.
Teaching, management, and assessment
- Maximize participation: instant activities at the start, small-sided games, minimal lines and elimination games.
- Standards-based assessment uses FitnessGram measures (PACER or mile run, curl-ups, push-ups, trunk lift, sit-and-reach) plus motor-skill rubrics and cognitive quizzes.
- Inclusion: modify space, equipment size, rules, and time rather than excluding a student; use partners and adapted equipment.
Traps. Sorting body composition or cardiorespiratory endurance into the skill-related list; treating muscular strength and endurance as identical; claiming static stretching before activity prevents injury (dynamic warm-ups are preferred); reading 220 − age as a precise individual value; equating participation with learning without any skill feedback.