The CUB technique for PE exams updated: Teacher and student guides now available

Dear PE colleagues,

A major focus of my own work is to support PE teachers to better prepare for PE and sport examinations. In the pursuit of this, I have written many guides and articles, but few of them have been adopted as rapidly and in as great numbers as the CUB technique.

CUB stands for:

• Circle

• Underline

• Box

And in the context of PE and sport exams, it is my recommendation for how every PE and sport student should annotate every exam question they face. Put bluntly, students should circle the command word, underline the key content and constraints and box the number of marks. 

Two free resources are now available: a new CUB student guide and an updated CUB teacher guide showing how to teach, model and scaffold the technique and you can download them using the link below.

Why CUB improves PE exam technique

Metacognitive techniques are at the heart of PE and sport students performing better on their exams. If our PE and sport students have the opportunity to see how an expert would go about annotating a PE or sport exam question, they can mirror that strategy. CUB is exactly this: it is a metacognitive technique that every high-performing PE student can rely on to help them correctly interpret exam questions.

How the CUB technique has developed

I originally published the CUB technique in 2025, blogging about it in early 2026 when it quickly became a mainstay of our national mock exam guidance and our annual revision series. PE teachers and students leapt on to CUB because it was simple, memorable and had impact. It was also very easy to implement. You can read the original blog on the CUB technique for PE and Sport students here.

Download the free CUB teacher and student guides

Below is the link to download two guides to the CUB technique. The first of the guides is a student guide. The student guide is published for the very first time today, and we invite you to download it, print it and to not only share it with your PE or sport students, but actively teach the model to them. Secondly, we have updated and refined the teacher guide. This is your companion for what CUB is, how to implement it and how to scaffold it over time. 

Are the CUB guides free to use?

Yes, the CUB downloads are completely free to all. Download them and use them as you wish. Our only insistence is that no one repackages them for sale on other platforms. You’d be surprised at how common this is. 

More PE exam technique and metacognitive strategies

The best thing that PE teachers can do is to read the guides, decide on how to use them and acknowledge how potentially impactful the CUB technique is for all students. However, it is also worth noting that the CUB technique is one metacognitive strategy for one specific challenge: how to annotate exam questions. Colleagues are reminded that customers of TheEverLearner.com on the Gold package have access to the entire PE Exam Technique course, which contains many other metacognitive strategies that PE students can adopt. If you are a current customer on the Bronze or Silver package, please engage with your account manager about an upgrade. If you are not yet a customer, what better time is there to join us? 

Thank you for reading.

James