At my work placement I am working with Year 1 children so for me this is a massive challenge as they are still very young in their development so keeping them active and engaged is the main goal for me.
The curriculum of the school is a none existent curriculum as they work alongside a coaching company called premier sports. The main thing about this is that we have to be in contact with the coach that we work along side so we can plan sessions around what he plans on delivering to the children. As the children are still very young the main focus of development is FMS (Lloyd and Oliver 2012).
In these coaching sessions the main thing I am looking for after looking at the coaching planning reflective framework (Muir et al 2011) is player engagement. The reason for this is because as they are still at a young age and keeping them engaged and active is important especially as they only have 1 hour per week for PE lessons so knowing this I need to take sure that my sessions are fun and engaging so that they make use of the time that they have. Furthermore, I believe that motivating the class is Also a main part of my coaching sessions when delivering to this year group. When looking a the self determination theory (Deci and Ryan 2000) motivation is key when they are at this stage of development as the likelihood of these having a main sport that they play consistently is very low so keeping them motivated to try different sports and making sure they are making use of the time available to them may allow them to find a sport they really enjoy and they may not of thought they would of enjoyed.
Psycho- social behaviour at this age is key as they do not want to left on their own or left out of any sort of activity so working on this in my sessions can help them massively as they get older and also in the classroom as well If they do something along the lines of group work. I looked at Harwood’s 5c’s ( Dr Matt Pain; Dr Chris Harwood; Rich Anderson, MSc) along with the composite youth model. In the 5c’s it is based around confidence, commitment, communication, control and concentration. I believe in year 1 these 5 different components are essential and will help massively towards gaining understanding in sport and also the enjoyment of PE lessons. This is because if you have confidence to try a new activity and not shy then not only will this make you feel good about yourself it may also rub off on others as they might believe that they can achieve what you have done. Another main component of this communication. This can have a big impact not only in PE lessons but in the classroom as well. The reasoning for this is you can work as team in the PE lessons to win the game or finish first depending on the activity and then in the classroom if you are doing group work. As a whole, I think that using something like this at this level of teaching is great baseline to work with as once these things have been mastered and you can see the progress then you will be able to progress further in my teaching.
Meso Plan
As mentioned above I am working with year 1 children and with them the sport I am teaching is gymnastics. For year 1 children gymnastics can be seen as a sport that isn’t appealing as it looks difficult and boring so the interest levels they might have may be low and the engagement levels may not be at the highest level. After taking the into consideration the aims and objectives, the main one for me as a coach is that I want the children to be at a point where they are comfortable with balancing and performing certain rolls within the area of gymnastics.
My Meso plan will be based on particular rolls and balances that are incorporated within gymnastics. To do this I have to slowly introduce:
- Conditioning of the muscles used in rolls such as forward rolls – For example, the muscles in the shoulder – with the use of bunny hops and putting all the weight on their shoulders to be able to roll over. 2. technique to be taught off the rolls and the safety involved in rolling.
- this will then be done again for each roll and balance
- why is the core important in a balance – and I think it is centre of mass over base of support – to allow you to balance.
Below is a an example of how I am going to implement gymnastics week by week and what each session is going to be about and what it is going to be about.
Macro Plan
The macro plan for this year group and gymnastics is pretty simple and it is measurable and definitely achievable for the children to complete. in the group of children I am coaching there are 30 children in the class so one of my objectives is to get at least 25 out of the 30 children capable of performing balances across different types of objects e.g. benches without any assistance from myself or any other coaches. Another objective for this plan is to get 20 out of the 30 performing the two types of rolls that will be taught to them and to get them performing those rolls without any helper assistance from myself as a coach.
End of Programme Macro Goals
The macro goals have been achieved and have been achieved quite successfully as the first goal was to get 25 out of the 30 all balancing across different types of objects without any assistance from a coach around and this was successfully achieved as 30 out of the 30 children has completed this with no help from anyone and after weeks of practice they had achieved the end goal of getting across with no help.
The second goal was also successfully achieved as I set out for at least 20 out of 30 to successfully perform the two types of rolls which were teddy bear and forward roll. At the start of the programme this was looking very unlikely as the children were struggling in getting the positioning right and getting into the right places for the roll to run smoothly so after weeks of practice and doing them more frequently the children managed to get the rolls spot on!
Overall, I feel very happy with my coaching for the children a I feel like I have progressed them further in the aspect of gymnastics because not many of them were happy when I first said gymnastics is the sport I will be delivering but as the weeks progressed they seemed to like it more and more and the engagement levels increased as well. The objectives that I set out seem very basic but as they are only year 1 they seemed very measurable and achievable for them to get and although some part of the objectives were challenging they got there and smashed there targets!
Regan Hadfield - Sport Coaching 