Cherry Avenue Physical Education Students Learn Cooperation in Strategic Team Activities

Kin-ball or Tchoutkball may not be familiar to everyone, but if you ask Cherry Avenue Elementary Third, Fourth, and Fifth graders about these two “out-of-the-ordinary” sports activities, they would enthusiastically say that these games were challenging and rewarding, and required determination.

The distinctive characteristics of Kin-ball are the “large size of the ball (and that the matches are played among three teams at the same time instead of traditional one-vs-one like the most of the team games.”

In Tchoutkball, now an international noncontact sport, players bounce the ball off framed trampolines at each end of the playing area. 

“Although both sports are games of simple throwing and catching,” explained Physical Education teachers Jen Fee and Gary Jensen, “the students quickly realize that it’s all about working cohesively together as a group in order to be strategically successful.”

Both Kin-ball and Tchoutkball do not require defensive players and all players are needed to score a point or prevent the other team from scoring a point. These games show the students that the more they cooperate in strategic thinking, the better the teams succeed. “The lessons being learned in these activities,” Coach Fee added, “are cooperation, communication, critical/strategic thinking, and team work. Overall these games capture the true concept of cooperative team building.”

Kin-ball or Tchoutkball may not be familiar to everyone, but if you ask Cherry Avenue Elementary Third, Fourth, and Fifth graders about these two “out-of-the-ordinary” sports activities, they would enthusiastically say that these games were challenging and rewarding, and required determination.

The distinctive characteristics of Kin-ball are the “large size of the ball (and that the matches are played among three teams at the same time instead of traditional one-vs-one like the most of the team games.”

In Tchoutkball, now an international noncontact sport, players bounce the ball off framed trampolines at each end of the playing area. 

“Although both sports are games of simple throwing and catching,” explained Physical Education teachers Jen Fee and Gary Jensen, “the students quickly realize that it’s all about working cohesively together as a group in order to be strategically successful.”

Both Kin-ball and Tchoutkball do not require defensive players and all players are needed to score a point or prevent the other team from scoring a point. These games show the students that the more they cooperate in strategic thinking, the better the teams succeed. “The lessons being learned in these activities,” Coach Fee added, “are cooperation, communication, critical/strategic thinking, and team work. Overall these games capture the true concept of cooperative team building.”