Blog Post 3 – Working with a new class

In our second term at placement, we were put with year 3 after working with year 4 for the first term. We knew we only had a three week block with the class, so we needed to get to know them quite quickly in the first session and work out how to make an impact through our sessions in only three weeks.

When planning these sessions I was unsure how we would be able to make an impact in just 3 weeks whilst also getting to know this class. This led to the content being rushed through in a shorter amount of time than it required and therefore, the participants not receiving the skills we wanted to provide them with.

The personal assets framework for sport (Cote, Turnidge & Evans, 2014) suggests that in order for learning to occur, there must be three dynamic elements in place. One of these elements is quality relationships. As we only had three weeks with this class, we never built these relationships and the children’s learning suffered as a result. If I am in a situation like this again where I am only coaching a group for a few weeks, I must remember to focus on building quality relationships in the first lesson.

Chow (2013) says that learning is non-linear, meaning you cannot predict the progress participants will make by a certain session. When delivering a short block, this can have a massive impact as participants who take longer to progress than others may not have time to achieve the objectives set out. This explains why the participants did not all achieve our objectives in the three week block. To combat this in future, it would be useful to have different levels of objectives and make these clear to participants once we have seen the levels they are performing at.

References:

Chow, J.Y. (2013). Nonlinear learning underpinning pedagogy: Evidence, challenges, and implications. Quest, 65(4), 469-484. DOI: 10.1080/00336297.2013.807746

Côté, J., Turnnidge, J. and Evans, M. B. (2014) ‘The Dynamic Process of Development through Sport. / Dinamični Proces Razvoja Prek Športa’, Kinesiologia Slovenica, 20(3), pp. 14–26. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=101535985&site=eds-live&scope=site (Accessed: 4 March 2020).