The School of Play Curriculum
Secondary School
Week Twelve brings together balance, strategy, fitness, and emotional reflection in an energising and meaningful way. Through interactive games such as Paper Scissor Rock Split, Dice Car Racing, and Last One Standing Dice, students practise physical coordination, sharp reaction skills, and strategic decision-making while working closely with teammates. The competitive elements of each activity encourage resilience, sportsmanship, and focus, all within a fun and supportive environment. Students learn to anticipate, adjust, and respond quickly, skills that are not only essential in games but also in navigating real-life challenges.
This week also emphasises mindset, reflection, and personal growth. In Get Positive, students look back on their recent experiences, discovering how frustrations can become learning opportunities and identifying the positive moments that have shaped them. They also set future intentions, cultivating optimism and awareness. By blending active games with reflective practice, Week Twelve helps students develop both physical confidence and emotional insight. The combination of teamwork, strategic play, and gratitude-based reflection supports students in building stronger connections, a positive outlook, and life skills that will elevate their well-being far beyond the classroom.
Weekly Lessons
Paper Scissor Rock Split
Paper Scissor Rock Split is an energetic twist on the classic rock-paper-scissors game, combining strategy, balance, and physical coordination. Players face off in a fun, fast-paced battle where each round’s winner steps back and the loser must “split,” sliding their foot forward while struggling to stay balanced. The further the game progresses, the more the tension builds, literally, creating a hilarious and engaging challenge that keeps players focused on both mental strategy and physical stability.
This game encourages friendly competition and sportsmanship while developing coordination, quick thinking, and core balance. Laughter is almost guaranteed as players stretch, wobble, and attempt to outmanoeuvre their opponent without toppling over. Perfect for classrooms, team-building sessions, or playful warm-ups, Paper Scissor Rock Split provides a simple yet highly interactive experience that promotes movement, connection, and plenty of fun.
Respectful Relationships
Understanding & Promoting Equality
Paper Scissor Rock Split helps students understand equality by:
- Providing a level playing field, where all students, regardless of size, strength, or skill, have an equal chance of winning through balance, strategy, and fair play.
- Reinforcing that respectful competition relies on shared rules, fairness, and inclusion.
- Encouraging students to value each other’s abilities and approaches, building an environment where everyone feels respected and safe.
- Showing that success comes from strategic thinking and composure rather than dominance or physical advantage.
Building Healthy Relationships
This activity strengthens healthy relationships by:
- Encouraging students to interact positively in a fun, low-risk challenge where connection comes before competition.
- Promoting respectful interactions, even when students win or lose, and reinforcing behaviours that support trust and friendship.
- Strengthening peer relationships by creating shared moments of laughter, challenge, and celebration.
- Helping students practise giving and receiving encouragement, key relational behaviours.
Developing Communication Skills
Paper Scissor Rock Split supports communication development by:
- Reinforcing the use of non-verbal communication such as eye contact, body language, stance, and playful gestures.
- Teaching students to read cues from their opponent, improving their awareness of others.
- Encouraging respectful communication before and after rounds (e.g., wishing luck, congratulating, checking in).
- Providing opportunities for students to reflect and talk about strategy, success, and challenge in a supportive way.
Enhancing Social & Emotional Intelligence
Students strengthen emotional intelligence by:
- Managing emotions during both winning and losing moments, building resilience and self-regulation.
- Staying calm, balanced, and focused under playful pressure, enhancing emotional control.
- Building empathy as they consider how their opponent feels during the game.
- Reflecting on their emotional responses and learning how to keep competitive situations positive and respectful.
Challenging Stereotypes
This game actively challenges stereotypes by:
- Showing that balance, strategy, and composure matter more than physical strength or gender-based assumptions.
- Promoting participation from all students, breaking down beliefs about who is “good” at physical challenges.
- Reinforcing that winning is not about aggression or dominance but about thoughtfulness and stability.
- Encouraging boys, girls, and gender-diverse students to play together on equal footing.
Recognising Rights
Students develop an understanding of rights and responsibilities by:
- Recognising that every student has the right to feel safe, respected, and supported during physical play.
- Demonstrating responsibility by maintaining personal space, playing safely, and following shared rules.
- Practising respect for boundaries, physical, emotional, and social, while competing.
- Understanding that fairness and mutual respect are central to positive interactions and healthy community culture.
Get Positive
Get Positive is a reflective well-being activity designed to help students explore their recent experiences, reframe challenges, and cultivate a mindset that focuses on growth and optimism. By revisiting frustrations from the past week, students learn to identify triggers, evaluate their reactions, and uncover valuable lessons hidden within negative moments. This process helps them build emotional awareness, resilience, and the ability to extract positives even from difficult situations.
The activity also encourages students to celebrate the meaningful experiences from the past six months and acknowledge the people who contributed to their happiness and growth. Finally, students shift their gaze forward by identifying future events they’re excited about, reinforcing an optimistic outlook. Get Positive empowers students to recognise that "you get more of what you focus on," making it a powerful tool for building a positive mindset, enhancing self-awareness, and fostering hope for the future.
Respectful Relationships
Understanding & Promoting Equality
Get Positive helps students understand equality by:
- Providing every student with the opportunity to reflect on their experiences, regardless of background, ability, or personality.
- Reinforcing that everyone experiences frustrations and celebrations differently, yet all perspectives are valued equally.
- Encouraging students to recognise that emotional responses vary from person to person, promoting empathy and equity in understanding others’ experiences.
- Supporting students to see their own growth as equally important as the growth of others, building a culture of fairness and self-respect.
Building Healthy Relationships
This activity strengthens healthy relationships by:
- Helping students identify the people who support them, influence them positively, and uplift them, enhancing appreciation and connection.
- Encouraging students to understand how their actions and reactions impact others, strengthening relational awareness.
- Promoting conversations about positive experiences and frustrations, which encourages openness, trust, and emotional honesty.
- Reinforcing the idea that personal growth improves relationships when students become more reflective, empathetic, and intentional with their behaviour.
Developing Communication Skills
Get Positive develops communication skills by:
- Teaching students to express their frustrations, joys, and reflections in a safe, structured way.
- Encouraging honest self-reflection, helping them communicate more clearly about their emotions and needs.
- Providing opportunities to discuss their positive experiences or future goals, improving articulation and clarity of thought.
- Helping students practise active listening when sharing with peers, building stronger communication habits.
Enhancing Social & Emotional Intelligence
This activity builds emotional intelligence by:
- Guiding students to identify the root causes of frustration and examine their responses, key skills in self-regulation.
- Encouraging students to recognise the lessons hidden within negative experiences, promoting resilience and adaptive thinking.
- Helping them reflect on how specific people shaped their character, which strengthens empathy and emotional understanding.
- Supporting a shift from problem-focused thinking to solution-focused and gratitude-based thinking.
Challenging Stereotypes
Get Positive challenges stereotypes by:
- Encouraging students to openly reflect on feelings, frustrations, and joys, helping break the stereotype that emotional expression is a weakness.
- Normalising self-reflection and vulnerability for all genders, which breaks down traditional assumptions around who “should” talk about feelings.
- Highlighting that personal growth and positive mindsets are universal human skills, not tied to gender, culture, or personality type.
- Encouraging students to celebrate support from anyone, family, friends, teachers, mentors, challenging rigid relationship norms.
Recognising Rights
Students learn about rights and responsibilities through this activity by:
- Recognising their right to reflect on experiences, process emotions, and learn from life’s challenges.
- Understanding their responsibility to communicate respectfully, even when frustrated.
- Acknowledging their right to feel supported, and their responsibility to contribute positively to relationships with others.
- Exploring how their actions and reactions impact the well-being of those around them.
Dice Car Racing
Dice Car Racing is a high-energy team game that blends fitness, teamwork, and the excitement of dice rolling into one fast-paced race. Teams are assigned numbers and compete to move their ‘dice car’ along a racecourse, with each dice roll determining which team advances. After every roll, all teams complete the exercise assigned to the spot on the track, keeping everyone active and fully engaged throughout the game. The combination of movement and chance creates an unpredictable, laughter-filled experience that keeps players motivated and on their toes.
The game encourages collaboration as teammates cheer each other on, strategise together, and celebrate every advance on the track. With physical challenges woven into every roll, Dice Car Racing promotes fitness, coordination, and resilience while fostering a strong sense of camaraderie across the group. Its simplicity, adaptability, and competitive edge make it an ideal activity for classrooms, sports teams, and group settings looking for a fun and inclusive way to combine exercise with playful competition.
Respectful Relationships
Understanding & Promoting Equality
Dice Car Racing supports equality by:
- Ensuring all students, regardless of fitness level, confidence, or ability, participate in the same shared experience.
- Structuring the race so that every team has equal opportunities to advance, emphasising fairness and inclusion.
- Encouraging students to recognise the strengths that each teammate brings, reinforcing the idea that everyone contributes meaningfully to group success.
- Creating an environment where every student plays an active role in the game, promoting equal involvement and participation.
Building Healthy Relationships
This activity strengthens positive relationships by:
- Creating a fun, low-pressure environment in which students encourage and support one another.
- Offering opportunities for students to build trust as they rely on teammates to complete exercises and move the team forward.
- Promoting shared experiences that build connection, laughing, cheering, and overcoming challenges together.
- Helping students realise the value of teamwork, mutual support, and celebrating collective progress.
Developing Communication Skills
Dice Car Racing enhances communication by:
- Encouraging teams to communicate strategies, pacing, and execution during the race.
- Helping students practise clear and positive verbal communication when motivating teammates.
- Providing a space for non-verbal communication, gestures, pacing cues, encouragement, to support teamwork.
- Giving students opportunities to discuss, negotiate, and plan collaboratively in a fast-paced setting.
Enhancing Social & Emotional Intelligence
Students build emotional intelligence through:
- Managing excitement, competitiveness, and adrenaline in a healthy and respectful way.
- Learning to regulate emotions when dice rolls favour other teams, reinforcing resilience and patience.
- Practising empathy by recognising different fitness levels and supporting peers who may need encouragement.
- Celebrating others’ successes, strengthening emotional maturity and positive relational habits.
Challenging Stereotypes
Dice Car Racing challenges stereotypes by:
- Promoting the idea that leadership, fitness, strategy, and motivation are not tied to gender or ability.
- Encouraging all students to participate fully, breaking stereotypes about who is “sporty,” “strong,” or “competitive.”
- Demonstrating that teamwork and support roles are equally valuable, regardless of who fills them.
- Reinforcing that physical activity can be playful and inclusive, not exclusive or performance-based.
Recognising Rights
This activity reinforces rights and responsibilities by:
- Helping students understand their right to participate, be supported, and be treated respectfully in team settings.
- Encouraging students to take responsibility for contributing positively to their team.
- Teaching that everyone has the right to feel included, but also the responsibility to help create that inclusive environment.
- Highlighting the importance of respecting rules and processes that ensure fairness.
Last One Standing Dice
Last One Standing Dice is a fast-paced, interactive elimination game where players race to be the first to get rid of all their dice. Each roll triggers different actions, passing dice left or right, placing dice in the centre, or holding onto them, keeping everyone alert and constantly adapting. The thrill of watching your dice disappear (or unexpectedly multiply!) creates a lively, unpredictable atmosphere that keeps players fully engaged from start to finish.
The game also incorporates optional physical or reflective elements when players roll a six, adding bursts of movement or gratitude moments that deepen the experience. Whether students are jumping, squatting, or sharing something positive, these moments bring energy, fun, and connection to the group. Last One Standing Dice blends chance, quick thinking, and active play, making it an ideal warm-up, brain break, or team-building activity for energising any group.
Respectful Relationships
Understanding & Promoting Equality
Last One Standing Dice promotes equality by:
- Ensuring all players begin with the same number of dice and identical opportunities, modelling fairness in shared experiences.
- Designing the game so actions are determined by chance, not skill level, every student participates equally regardless of physical ability, confidence, or background.
- Encouraging students to recognise that everyone contributes to the activity and has value, reinforcing social inclusion.
- Keeping gameplay simple and accessible, ensuring all students feel capable and involved.
Building Healthy Relationships
This activity strengthens positive social relationships by:
- Creating a fast-paced, fun shared experience that brings students together through movement, laughter, and cooperation.
- Requiring students to pass dice left or right, naturally encouraging interaction and strengthening peer connections.
- Promoting enjoyment and engagement that builds rapport among students, reducing social barriers.
- Helping students practise kindness and encouragement during moments of challenge or surprise.
Developing Communication Skills
Students enhance communication by:
- Verbal and nonverbal cues as dice are exchanged, helping students coordinate quickly and respectfully.
- Expressing gratitude or positive reflections (in the Gratitude Variation), developing emotional communication skills.
- Engaging in group debrief conversations, practising active listening and clear expression of thoughts.
- Learning to communicate calmly and effectively during high-energy, time-pressured situations.
Enhancing Social & Emotional Intelligence
The game builds emotional intelligence through:
- Managing fast-changing outcomes, helping students regulate emotions like excitement, frustration, or anticipation.
- Practising resilience when dice move unexpectedly or physical tasks are required.
- Pausing for gratitude reflection when rolling a six, increasing mindfulness and emotional awareness.
- Understanding how quick decision-making, physical activity, and emotional reflection can influence mood and well-being.
Challenging Stereotypes
Last One Standing Dice helps challenge stereotypes by:
- Demonstrating that physical activity can be enjoyable and accessible for all genders, abilities, and personality types.
- Encouraging students to recognise that strength, agility, reflection, and quick thinking are not tied to any stereotype.
- Providing a space where competitiveness is healthy and inclusive rather than linked to cultural or gender expectations.
- Showing that expressing gratitude and reflecting emotionally is valuable for everyone, not just certain groups.
Recognising Rights
This activity reinforces rights and responsibilities by:
- Helping students understand their right to participate in a fun, safe, and supportive environment.
- Encouraging respect for others when passing dice, sharing space, and performing physical challenges.
- Highlighting the responsibility to act safely, follow game rules, and ensure a positive experience for peers.
- Supporting students’ right to be heard and valued during the debrief and reflection process.
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