The importance of Demonstrations

On arrival at placement we knew that some of the students second language was English and with the students only being in reception their English would not be very developed. Therefore the students might struggle to understand what we were saying. This meant that we had to plan our coaching behaviours especially our Demonstrations.

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 could remember the information(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. We would also 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 due to the lack of English spoke.

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. 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). Our demonstrations were slow and clear as possible so that the pupils could see, try and copy. However sometimes they did struggle to understand and took more than 3 demonstrations for the students to understand. This was because the moments that we were showing were complex but were easy to do when they knew the movements they would be able to do it. Therefore we had to carry out the demonstrations 5 times which was more than the theory said as they could not copy what we was doing. This was because the children did not understand he task and could not remember the cues of the demonstration so by doing it an extra 2 times it allowed for the students to understand and could 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 the other students(Deci, 1985). This was used because we had one child who kept saying that they could not do it and saying they were not going to take part. However when they saw a class peer do the demonstration it then motivated the child to try and did complete it. 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.