During the current block the sport that is being coached is Gymnastics. This means that we are able to work on fundamental skills specifically looking at locomotion and Stability throughout the half term (Burton and Miller 1998). In one session it included combining different skills and new skills and putting them into a little routine. This included Rolls, travelling along a bench, jumping, landing and holding a balance at the end. This meant that various equipment was required such as bench, mats and hurdles and took time to set up. Therefore students became bored, unfocussed which led to misbehaviour and unable to maintain focus (Goh et al., 2006). For the next session/ following weeks it was known that the practice structure needed further thinking and research in order for the session to flow smoothly with little disruption which would allow for the students to loose focus.
When looking at the Coaching Planning and Reflective framework (Muir et al., 2011) one of the key points is Practice Structure. This meant that when planning our sessions more consideration was needed. As more time was spent off task rather than the pupils actually having a try at the activities therefore not giving them the opportunity to play and sample the sport. This means that the children are not having that much time being active and playing PE as this lesson is there only PE lesson of the week short of the government guidelines which should aim to be at least 2 hours per week (Education, 2020). It is vital that our sessions are spent as much time the students being as active as possible to ensure that they are improving their fundamental skills (Burton and Miller, 1998), having fun and explore (Erikson, 1968).
Our sessions are now carefully thought out to ensure that they flow from activity to activity and gives them all the chance to explore and have learnt to try and let the children getting used to sharing e.g. who are the taggers (Piaget, 1952) and playing games with rules that us coaches create and let players create the rules e.g. what jump they must do over a hurdle (Piaget, 1958).
References
Burton A.W., and Miller D.E., (1998) Movement Skill Assessment. Human Kinetics. Illiois: Champaign
Education. (2020). Statutory curriculum | Department of Education. [online] Available at: https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/articles/statutory-curriculum#toc-2 [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
Erikson, E. (1968). Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton
Goh, C. and Taib, Y., (2006). Metacognitive instruction in listening for young learners. ELT journal, 60(3), pp.222-232.
Muir, B., Morgan, G., Abraham, A. and Morley, D., (2011). Developmentally appropriate approaches to coaching children. In Coaching children in sport (pp. 39-59). Routledge.
Kolb, D.A., (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. FT press.
Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of Intelligence in Children. New York: International Universities Press.
Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence: An essay on the construction of formal operational structures. New York: Basic
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