The purpose of this study was to conduct a lesson unit for fourth graders focusing on divergent and convergent thinking in flag football strategy planning, and to analyze changes in the students strategy planning before and after the lesson unit. The participants were 64 fourth-grade students. We conducted a paper-based strategies planning test before and after a lesson unit consisting of eight flag football physical education (PE) classes. During the first half of the lesson unit, we set goals for students to present their ideas and plan various strategies, and during the second half, we provided specialized instructions in selecting and modifying effective strategies. The strategies planning test was analyzed from the perspectives of divergent thinking i.e., number and concreteness of plans, and convergent thinking i.e., number and appropriateness of plans.The main results following the strategies planning test are below:(1) The number of strategies planned by the students increased.(2) Furthermore, the number of strategies on how to decoy players and the defensive players moves led to an increase in the percentage of concrete strategies.(3) The percentage of strategies on attacking places without defensive players increased.These results confirmed that the students were planning more concrete strategies through the lesson unit and thus, their divergent thinking had improved. In addition, the students came together to plan a strategy, assuming they would attack a place without defensive players and thus, their convergent thinking had improved. Therefore, it can be said that the lesson unit was an example of effective methods to promote divergent and convergent thinking of strategy planning by children.

The revision of competency-based course of study has increased the importance of assessment. However, game performance assessment in PE class, individual-based game performance has not been assessed due to not enough trials to ensure sufficient trials to calculate individual-based success rate. In this study, we tried to curriculum assessment based on individual-based game performance assessment on using the number of trials and successes as indicators. We conducted 8-hour flag football units for 6th graders (n=103), all games were taken in video and game individual performance of those who participated in all classes (n=81) were assessed. Interobserver agreement between 2 analysts are 95%. As a result, from those assessment, it was possible to assess degrees of achievement of individual, and to clarify children who had few learning opportunities during games. Results in this study give effective feedback for assessing intended curriculum based on learned outcomes of individual children. It makes possible to develop more developmentally appropriate curriculum for games teaching based on performance standards.

Against a backdrop of reports that the distance throwing of children in elementary school was still on the decline, several research on effectiveness of subject matter aimed at improving the distance throwing ability of children has been undertaken. However, there were still unresolved issues in terms of the development of developmentally appropriate subject matter content for improving throwing distance.In order to resolve this problem, the developmental process of elementary school children s distance throwing ability needs to be clarified based on their throwing distance and sex.As such, the aim of this research was set as clarifying the developmental process of for elementary school children s distance throwing ability. This research was conducted on a sample of 277 elementary school children (122 boys, 155 girls) for whom personal softball throwing distance records from the 1st to 6th grade were available. The children in the research were divided into the three groups of upper, middle, and lower for each sex on the basis of throwing distance records from 6th grade, and the distance throwing records of each were compared. The results were as summarized below.1) The data suggested that throwing distance was influenced by factors other than height and body weight.2) There was only a weak correlation between throwing distance between in the 1st grade and in the 6th grade. This suggested that it might be possible to improve children s distance throwing ability through the implementation of an appropriate curriculum in line with their developmental stage. For the lower group, however, the data suggested that more careful instruction for distance throwing was <原著論文> スポーツ教育学研究 第 42 巻 第 1 号 2022 年 7 月