When we first arrived at our placement we knew that some of the students second language was English and with the students only being in reception there English would not be very developed. Therefore they might have struggled to understand what we were saying. This meant that we had to plan our coaching behaviours especially our Demonstrations as these would be key for the students to know what they would need to be doing for the activities.

However when we did our first session we did our demonstrations but the students still didn’t understand what they needed to do so we needed to repeat our demonstrations several times to ensure that participants knew what they needed to do and the technique thats needed to carry out the activity.

Before leading the session I had a basic understanding of demonstrations that they would need to be carried out before the activity and at the very start of the activity so that the children remember the informations (Anderson, 2000). From this we planned to do several demonstrations before the start of every activity to ensure that the children knew what they were doing. To ensure that the children knew what they were doing we would use questioning to gain an understanding whether or not the children knew what they were doing and the technique required to carry out the skill (Bloom, 1956).

Once reflecting on the session we knew that demonstration would need to be a key coaching behaviour throughout our sessions in the future. Because the participants are young so they are unable to take on large amounts of information and because some of them do not speak much english so some of them will not understand verbal information so demonstrations will need to be used to explain to them the activity and the technique required to carry out the skills.

Therefore when doing further research it was shown that demonstrations will need to be carried out several times at the start to ensure that the participants can remember and then copy the action (Anderson, 2000). Therefore the next week we demonstrated an action 3 times therefore this meant that the participants knew what they were doing because when we did the activity they knew what they needed to do. Another suggestion is that demonstrations allow students to visualise what a technique looks like therefore they are essential in passing over information in a non- verbal way (Williams et al., 2005). When putting this into practice we made sure that our demonstrations were slow and clear as possible so that the pupils could see and try and copy. It was also beneficial for a coach to demonstrate and then a pupil to demonstrate after as they could see a fellow peer could do it then they could also believe that they could also do the task (Bandura, 1977) and motivate them (Deci, 1985) . Also it allowed for us to check for understanding because if they could not demonstrate then we knew that the pupil did not understand what they needed to do.

References

Bandura, A. and Adams, N.E., 1977. Analysis of self-efficacy theory of behavioral change. Cognitive therapy and research, 1(4), pp.287-310.

Bloom, B.S., (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay, pp.20-24.

Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985) Intrinsic Motivation and Self- Determination in Human Behaviour. New York: Plenum Press

Weeks, D. and Anderson, L. (2000). The interaction of observational learning with overt practice: effects on motor skill learning. Acta Psychologica, 104(2), pp.259-271.

Williams, A. and Hodges, N. (2005). Practice, instruction and skill acquisition in soccer: Challenging tradition. Journal of Sports Sciences, 23(6), pp.637-650.