Student-Designed Skating Course with Risk Assessment

In groups, students design a skating station with a technical goal and rate it with a simple risk matrix before setting it up. Then everyone rotates through the stations, always with a helmet and full pads, and rates the other groups' work.

How to play

1. Groups of five get a worksheet: design a station for stopping, turning, crossovers, slalom or dodging, listing its risk level and a safety measure (8 min).
2. Review with the teacher: each group explains its station, and anything unsafe, such as ramps, jumps or tight gaps, is changed (4 min).
3. Set up the stations with cones, poles on the ground and hoops (4 min).
4. Rotate through the five stations, 3 minutes each; one member of the designing group explains the task and supervises (15 min).
5. Rating: each group scores the other stations on clarity, safety and challenge (4 min).

Rules

• Helmet and full pads for everyone who skates.
• No ramps, jumps, slopes or objects more than 1 foot off the ground.
• No station is used until the teacher has checked it.
• Each station has a clear stopping zone of at least 15 feet.

Variations

Adaptations

• Limited mobility: owns the group's risk matrix and explains the station.
• Autism: gets a clear role in the group, such as drawing the station layout.
• Low fitness or injury: chooses the easy level at each station or serves as a spotter.

Learning goals

• Plan a motor task with a specific technical goal.
• Identify risks and propose realistic safety measures.
• Lead a station and explain a task to classmates.

Equipment for a class of 25

• inline skates: 15
• helmets: 15
• knee pads: 15
• elbow pads: 15
• wrist guards: 15
• cones: 40
• poles: 10
• hoops: 10
• worksheets: 6

Teacher tip

If the school has no skates or pads, borrow them from a local skating club, the city recreation department or another school, or let students bring their own with a signed parent permission form. This works well as the final lesson of the skating unit, once the class can stop safely.

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