This drill will help teach your students proper running form and will help increase their balance. Have your students stand far enough apart from each other that they do not touch when the spread their arms out wide. Show students proper running form, including arms bent at a 90-degree angle and how to pump the arms and legs opposite of each other. Ask the students to begin running in place, using proper form. Blow your whistle, which will signal that your students are to freeze in their running position, balancing on one foot with other foot raised. Blow the whistle again and repeat the drill several more times.
The more your students run, the more exercise they will get and the faster they will become. This drill encourages your students to run as fast as they can to collect as many balls as they can. Spread a large number of small balls, such as golf balls, around a field. Have your students line up on one end of the field. Place a small bucket behind each student. On your mark, the students run out, pick up one ball and return it to their bucket. Play continues until all the balls have been collected, but they must be picked up one at a time. If you make it a competition, the player with the most balls in his bucket at the end is the winner.
Relay races are an effective way to build running skills, and they also provide a good workout for children. Choose an object that the children will pass to one another during the relay. A small ball, bean bag or baton will work well. Divide your students up into two teams. Divide each team into two groups and have them line up, facing each other, on opposite ends of the play area. Blow the whistle and have the first student in each team, holding the ball or other object, run to the opposite line, pass off the object and then go to the end of the line. Continue until all students have had a chance to run. The winner is the team who finishes first. Increase the challenge by having the students run backwards, in slow motion or as fast as they can.
Increase your students' speed, agility and endurance with a cone drill. Set up several cones around your playing field, making sure they are spread far enough apart that your students can easily make their way through the course. Demonstrate how you want your students to run through the cones, including what order they must run them. Have the students run the course one or two at a time, and record how quickly they complete the drill. After each student has had a turn, ask each one to run the course again to see if they can beat their first time.