August 17th

This morning was great starting off with my basketball class. Mr.Finley and I ran it a little different today because of what they are learning in the lecture part, which is psychology on arousal, feelings, and reaction. We didn’t tell them what our plan was but after the warm up, we just threw the pinnies out onto the floor and said “were on strike.” We watched to see what the students did and if anyone would become a leader. A few students started to just shoot around, playing horse, and taking half court shots. The other half of the students stood around, looked at the pinnies and a few of them even put them on. Eventually after about 10 minutes, someone took the leadership role and got 2 half-court games going on. Usually for games I set some sort of requirement before shooting that that always complain about because its hard but it was funny to hear a few of them ask “Miss do we need to set a pick?” We didn’t answer any questions and we let them play for about five minutes to see if they would switch to play a different team, which they did. Mr.Finley brought them to the middle to talk about what we did, why and how it relates to what they are learning. The next strategy was favoritism. We took the 5 best players and put them on the same team and gave them every call possible in their favor. We had them play full court against one team while the other observed. Besides that yellow was very good, I was calling everything in their favor even if it was clearly out on them. I called traveling on the other team even if they weren’t, reaching, and any sort of touching. We switched the one team out, did it over again and debriefed at the end. We had a few students get very frustrated with this, scream at me for making “crap” calls and a few give up. Majority of the students saw it as a challenge though which I thought was really interesting. They stepped up their game, played awesome defense and ran around like animals to get open. I was pretty impressed and now raised my expectations of how much effort they put into any future games. Mr. Finley mentioned he spoke to another teacher doing basketball and said that our class is actually at a higher level after these few weeks. Both classes started at the same level but from all the games, practicing and drills, our class has gotten up to a B level instead of the usual C. Proud to be teaching this class!

Year 12 class went MUCH better after taking Cameron’s advice. Not as good as I think they can be but I had them listening to me the entire time. I finally got them to sit when I told them to which was my happiest moment, as pathetic as that sounds. At first they weren’t really into the 10 pass game but I tried working with them and made an agreement that if they gave me 5 intense minutes of it, we would move onto target competition. They did just that. I know they want to just throw the Frisbee really far so like I did in basketball; I gave them the opportunity in a very organized way. We used the soccer goals that have the football field goal poles at the top. In the goal was 1 point, above was one and there is a section of triangles in between that was 2 points. They had decent aiming for this and two of them got it in the triangles. Although it was not maximum participation with only two going at a time, at this point I was glad that they were excited and into something. We finished with a game but the wind was acting up and it was really difficult to get the Frisbee down to the other end. In my experience, it is easier to play indoors.  

Last session of the day was a little different than usual also. Since they got their assignment that involves groups of students creating their own game, we planned on playing a few made up or small-sided games to give them ideas. We played crab soccer and mat ball.  We wanted to get to capture the flag but we didn’t have the time because the kids were really into mat ball. I did have to talk to the girls today though because they were not listening to me at all. I made them sit in silence for 2 minutes because they wasted two minutes of my time. Even though I really dislike doing things like that, it worked like a charm. They listened to me when I was talking for the rest of class. Next week we will play capture the flag and get to preview a few of the group games.