Don't Invade My Territory!

One aspect of being a Pedagogy and Coaching Major of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary that I truly appreciate is the opportunity that I have to teach and learn from my peers. I find this experience to be extremely valuable, and I can certainly say that I have grown as an educator and as a person through these teaching episodes. On March 20th, I had the opportunity, along with my three group members, to teach our peers an hour long lesson on Invasion and Territory Games. My group designed our lesson plan to be for a Junior High or High School student demographic, but the activities that we chose could be modified for a younger age group. The games we taught were The Number Game, Four-Corner Soccer, The Tennis Ball Game, and Capture the Flag (rules to these games will be posted on my activity pages.)

Overall, I felt like our teaching episode was quite successful and it ran smoothly. One of the strengths that we exhibited was our communication between group members. Earlier on in our planning phase, we had laid out a completely different lesson plan. The lesson plan we originally came up with was very focused on the invasion and territory aspects of soccer specifically. However, through talking about our lesson plan and observing the teaching styles of the groups that went before us, we made modifications which helped our lesson plan run much more smoothly. We came to the realization that having a full hour of soccer specific games/activities could potentially be boring and repetitive for students who weren't interested in soccer. I felt that we had more success through switching our lesson plan to include a wider array of games that could be fun for every student, as opposed to games where only athletes or kids who liked soccer would have fun. Additionally, one strength of our teaching was our ability to improvise when needed, relating to equipment specifically. As we were preparing to teach our lesson, we came to the realization that not all of the equipment we had planned on using was accessible to us. Namely, we had planned on creating a "safe zone" for the Tennis Ball Game using masking or painters tape. Yet, when we realized that nobody had brought it and there was none we could use at school, we improvised and used long skipping ropes to create safe zones. This was certainly not what we originally had in mind, but it ended up being successful. I believe that if myself and my group members did not feel comfortable communicating with each other openly, then these two successes could have easily become weaknesses.

While there were many aspects of our teaching that were successful, there were also weaknesses and areas we could prove upon. The main thing that I noticed which could have been improved was the amount of moving around that students were doing. This weakness was caused mainly by a lacking in our planning and foresight abilities. We were fortunate that the group of peers that we were teaching was only about 14-15 students. Due to this smaller number of students, there was a fairly high amount of time on task with our activities. I could imagine, however, that if we had a phys-ed class of 25 or more students that there would be a great deal more standing around. I noticed that with Capture the Flag there were some students who were being very active and running around, while some others hung around and were less active. Capture the Flag is an easy game for students to understand and play, and it teaches invasion, territory, offence and defence very well, yet it also is an activity where it is easy for students to wait around and not actively play. In the future, I would modify the rules so that each student would have a time limit for staying in one place of around 30 seconds to a minute. This creates a greater opportunity for students to be active, and allows them to be more engaged in the game itself.

As mentioned above in the section where I identify the strengths in our teaching, I felt that there were both positive and negative aspects to our planning. The planning that we did as a group was made much easier and comprehensive by the fact that we were all able to meet up to discuss our plan, as well as we were able to communicate openly. We chose the activities that we chose with several considerations in mind. All of our activities could be played in an outdoor environment (given that the weather cooperates) with slightly different equipment, such as cones instead of benches in 4-Corner Soccer. Planning activities that can be indoor our outdoor activities makes the lesson plan much more versatile and allows it to be used at any time during the year. Additionally, our lesson plan was fairly adaptable to students who may have had varying levels of mobility. One of our peers has has a lowered level of mobility due to knee injury and surgery, and this student was still able to play our games as a defender in the Tennis Ball Game and Capture the Flag. Finally, our planning included a warm-up and a cool-down as we felt that these were important aspects to include in any lesson. Due to the highly active nature of our lesson plan, we allotted 5 minutes for warm-up and cool-down respectively to ensure that the students' bodies were ready to move once we began, and that they would be able to prevent any injury or soreness by stretching out at the end. One final aspect of our planning that allowed our lesson plan to run very smoothly was the fact that we created teams for our students/peers prior to the class starting. This allowed our lesson to run seamlessly and there was little to no downtime between activities caused by trying to form teams. Creating the teams beforehand allowed pine to be handed out by one of my group members as game rules were being explained by another, so that the activity could commence as soon as the rules were explained. I found this to be very beneficial, and it also increased the amount of activity time for our students/peers.

There were very few modifications that we made in the duration of our teaching episode, yet the most important one we made had to do with our equipment. Our plan had called for the use of plastic buckets for the Tennis Ball Game, and when we realized that two buckets we not available, we had to improvise and use two cardboard boxes. These boxes worked just as well, and served the same purpose, but it was not what we had originally intended. Additionally, as mentioned above, we had planned on using tape to create a "safe zone" around these boxes/buckets. When we realized that tape was not available to us, we improvised and found that using the long skipping ropes could work just as well. We were slightly concerned about the potential tripping hazard that the skipping ropes presented, but it ended up not being an issue. An additional modification we made while teaching was the adding of soccer balls during 4-Corner Soccer. It was apparent to us that the use of only 2 balls left many students standing around and watching the game-play. Thus, by adding 4 balls, there was an increased amount of time on task, as well as a greater opportunity for as many students to be active as possible.

Overall, this lesson planning and teaching experience taught me a great deal about the importance of creating a detailed and well thought out lesson plan. The lesson plan that my group created was very well thought out, and it allowed for all of our activities to run smoothly. I firmly believe that if was not as comfortable with open communication as we were, that our teaching episode would not have been as successful. I have also realized that the communication aspect that we brought to the table is a critical skill for future teaching or coaching use. I am aware that there will be many times where I may be working with other people, and without clear communication, things can go awry very quickly. Another aspect of our teaching episode that I reflected upon was the attention and behaviour of students. We were fortunate to be teaching a class of engaged university students who listened to our instructions and followed what we said. However, I believe that if we were to be put into an elementary or junior high school setting our experience would be drastically different. When dealing with varying age groups, one must be adaptable and attentive to the situations at hand. Younger students typically have a shorter attention span, so I predict we would have to spend less time explaining our games, while still keeping our explanations clear, and more time actually playing and exploring the activity. I am very glad that our lesson went smoothly and was enjoyable for all participants involved. I am certainly looking forward to having more opportunities to teach and learn from my peers!