31st January 2013
During this session we had 9 participants, which was a small decrease on the week before. The pupils seemed enthusiastic when they arrived, however for some reason this session there was a lack of behaviour from the pupils and Paul had to raise his voice a few times to get his attention across. Even with that, the session ran smoothly, and once in a game situation the pupils focused and used a lot of energy running around and trying to win. The drill ‘Robin Hood’ was used to warm up, where a number of cones are in the middle, and pupils have to run back and forth to their corner collecting a cone and taking it back. This worked well as a warm up as the kids got a good run around. During the main activity, blocking was the aim of the session, so pupils took it in turns to have a dodgeball in their hands and block throws from the opponents. This is important as a lot of the time the pupils just pick up the ball and throw it needlessly, and then get hit out, whereas if they held onto the ball for slightly longer and assesed the situation they could block a throw and then use that ball to hit an opponent out.
As you can see a tactical approach was used during this session. Gubacs-Collins (2007) research was aimed at gaining an understanding of perceptions of the teacher educator and her students to the tactical approach. The teacher-researcher further noted how the participants mentioned how physically and cognitively engaged they were in class, and how the tactical approach emphasized both a sense of fun as well as a sense of challenge. Many authors (e.g. Butler 2005; Harvey et al., 2010) argue that the tactical approach can be used to challenge practitioners pre-conceived notions of teaching and learning, and also develop their own coaching practice beyond safe methods.