1. What is “PLAY”?
PLAY stands for Physical Literacy Assessment for Youth. It’s a collection of workbooks, forms and tracking sheets that comprise the tools designed to assess physical literacy in children and youth.
2. What can the PLAY tools do for me?
The PLAY tools can be used to measure and track physical literacy over time. This will allow you to pinpoint areas of weakness in a child’s development and help that child to become more physically literate.
3. How do I use the PLAY tools?
There are six PLAY tools currently available online (see below for a list of tools). Each tool provides a different perspective of a child’s level of physical literacy, which can help identify areas of weakness that may have been overlooked by a coach or parent.
To use the PLAY tools, identify which of the 6 tools you would like to gain insight from. Locate an appropriate person to fill out the tool-specific form. Review the scores for each PLAY tool used to identify weaknesses or gaps in the child’s development. Use the tracking sheets from each PLAY tool used to track the child’s progress for each activity.
4. Who can use the PLAY tools?
Even though some of the PLAY tools require specific people to fill out the form, each tool is useful for anyone looking to gain insight into a child’s level of physical literacy.
For example, a coach might ask parents to fill out PLAYparent because the coach wants to know how physically literate the children on his team are. The coach is using the information from PLAYparent that has been provided by the parent. Conversely, a parent could ask the coach of their child’s team to fill out PLAYcoach. The parent would now be the one using the information from PLAYcoach provided by the coach.
Of the six PLAY tools created, there are five tools to be used by specific people and one tool that can be used by everyone.
5. What does each tool do?
PLAYfun and PLAYbasic are used by trained professionals to assess a child’s fundamental skills, such as running, throwing, kicking and balance.
PLAYself is used by children and youth to assess their own physical literacy.
PLAYparent is used by parents of school-aged children to assess their child’s level of physical literacy.
PLAYcoach is used by coaches, physiotherapists, athletic therapists, exercise professionals and recreation professionals to record their perceptions of a child’s level of physical literacy.
PLAYinventory is used by anyone to record and track a child’s leisure-time activities throughout the year.
6. What qualifications do I need to use PLAYfun and PLAYbasic?
PLAYfun and PLAYbasic require the assessor to be able to identify the specific differences between movements at initial, emerging, competent and proficient stages.
To use PLAYfun and PLAYbasic, a person must be a “trained professional”. NCCP-trained coaches, physiotherapists, athletic therapists, exercise professionals, and individuals trained in movement analysis are all considered to be “trained professionals”.
7. How long does it take to complete one of the assessments?
Each assessment typically takes between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the number of children being assessed.
8. How many of the different PLAY assessments should I use?
We suggest that you use as many of the PLAY tools as possible when assessing a child’s physical literacy.
By using more than one PLAY tool, you will obtain a more complete view of the child’s physical literacy.
9. Is there an age limit for the assessments?
The PLAY tools can be used for anyone above the age of seven and they have no upper age limit.
That being said, each PLAY workbook gives recommendations for children in the 7–12 age range. Also, the optimal time to develop physical literacy is during the Active Start, FUNdamentals and Learn to Train stages of Canadian Sport for Life’s Long-Term Athlete Development framework.
10. Will there be a PLAY assessment for children who are younger than seven?
We are currently working on developing PLAY tools for children between the ages of five and seven.
11. Can the PLAY tools be used for persons with a disability?
While the PLAY tools were not specifically designed for persons with a disability, the tools do assess on an individual basis. This means that a person with a disability should be scored based on the number of activities they can do. Even a partial assessment can still provide some valuable insight into a child’s level of physical literacy.
12. I accidentally created too many participants for one of my groups – how do I get rid of those accounts?
Visit the tutorial for Removing a Participant from a Group.