Reply To: Game Sense, Play Reading

[Kai K]

Here's lecture by Rod Thorpe.
It's really fascinating stuff.

Pt. 1 https://www.isportz.com/videotemplateview.cfm?urlkey=Mj0nSC9SQEkrRklOX01bX09CSTs3I005Sgo%3D

pt. 2 https://www.isportz.com/videotemplateview.cfm?urlkey=Mj0nSC9SQEkrRklOX01bX09CSTs3I005SQo%3D

pt. 3 https://www.isportz.com/videotemplateview.cfm?urlkey=Mj0nSC9SQEkrRklOX01bX09CSTs3I005SAo%3D

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Kai, great posting. In Physical Education class you teach all kinds of sports from goal centred like basketball and soccer football to racquet sports, gymnastics, dance, track and field. I found a huge challenge was how to use limited space and keep many students active and learning at the same time.

I did a lot of teaching in gymnasiums a little bigger than a full sized volleyball court that had 3 badminton courts painted on the floor, 6 basketball hoops and a stage. The first half of my teaching career I had one class at a time with 20-34 kid's. The last 13 years I had double classes in a small gym with 48-64 students at once. About 6 of the 10 months the weather was too cold to go outside.

We adapted by adding lines between each badminton court, so now there were 6 volleyball and badminton areas and you could have 12 teams of 4-5 players. Same with the basketball's 6 stations. The 12 small groups could do the drills or small skill games and then we would have tournaments with progressive modified rules. The teams would circle the winner after the game and we would have leagues. Students would go to the court on the chart the next class and be against someone else. Another option was a King's Court rotation.

This method had all 48-60 participating all the time. No sitting out.

For badminton we did the same thing and added exercise stations on the stage where half the class did a circuit to music that they prepared and they would rotate stations when the music stopped. We did dance, combatives, gymnastics the same way and the most popular thing was always Mission Impossible which was a obstacle course that got progressively harder and you had to start over when you failed.

When we could go outside we would have an open day every 4 classes where the students chose their activity and had to spend a certain amount of time on cardio and strength, skill and game play. I just walked around to supervise and give help when asked.

It was basically the ABC method applied to all activities. If I never met Juuso and adjusted my thinking these huge classes would have been overwhelming and I would have had half the class sitting and watching like I see in many schools.

Juhani is working with the school system in Finland to help them implement this approach.

In about 3 hours I leave on the 5 hour drive through the mountains to Jasper for a 3 day camp with the players in their minor hockey association. Gaston does skating in the morning and my son and I do hockey in the afternoon. They now have 6 small nets so I don't have to take mine there. The whole point of the clinic it to use games to let them learn HOW TO PLAY THE GAME by PLAYING.

Anyway thanks for the links you have been posting. It is nice to see the idea of playing to learn how to play is spreading around the sporting world.

Kai