Artifact 1
Chapter 9: Understanding baseball in physical education: A methodical approach to enhance learning baseball on game-like situations.
- How can students of all different skill levels play together and get the same experience?
It is relatively hard for a teacher to make their way to every student to help them with their hitting, throwing and catching. There are many ways Koekoek, Walinga and Dokman have come up with for students to learn the tactical skills of baseball in modified games with a smaller number of participants. They believe that “children learn more effectively when they; can decide their own rules and ways of playing, which means that by making their own decisions they not only improve their skills but also build up confidence, have a play-centered role, whereby they can frequently bat and field, and spend very little time waiting around, and can practice their basic skills in a real match, which keeps them motivated” The games they propose you to play have basic skills every child would have no matter their skill level, kicking, throwing and running. There are many different games you can play with your students to get the same knowledge and more experience than playing baseball by playing some of these baseball-like mini games. The students get more at bats, each person gets practice fielding the ball 3 times more often than playing a baseball game at this age. Learning baseball in physical education is based on a motivational construct, they have better experiences if they are fully engaged in the learning construct if they are continuously moving and having fun. If your class struggles as a whole to play baseball or doesn’t quite have the skills needed to play and need to start fresh building up those skills check out this chapter, there’s over 10 variations of games you can choose that all have aspects of baseball to them. Most of the games are for elementary education/middle school in my opinion, first time learning and touching a baseball in a P.E class setting. Its very broken down which is great because its more continual play with lots of reps and small team play. With most of us going into being high school teachers we should be able to start off with some of the more advanced games that simulate a baseball game more accurately because the students should have already been introduced to the other games in previous years and have the basic skills to partake.
Learning experiences in EPHE 452
Learning Experiences in EPHE 452 in order to generate evidence to develop competence.
- Professional engagement on the course Google Classroom Stream
- Scholarly summary and connection to academic articles on teaching games in PE
- Reflective insights demonstrating a growth mindset on the course material and field experience in relation to emerging ability to teaching games in PE
Reflection Prompts
Assessment: I believe I am in the developing stage of the personal and professional preparation competency, I engage on google classroom streams and I demonstrate a growing mindset of material while gaining field experience.
Evidence: How does the evidence show your developing competencies in relation to this big idea?
Personal growth: I now understand the purpose of the TGFU model, I’m usually a closed-minded person on certain things when it comes to learning sports, but I like the model providing different games to learn the same skills that you can apply to sports.
Goal: I will work more on my understanding of the model and learning games to build up my students skills before playing a sport. I will be researching more into the ways the TGFU model builds understanding for the students and what lesson plans I can create.
Reflection
Assessment: To what level of competency do you feel you are performing the learning implied in this big idea?
Evidence: How does the evidence show your developing competencies in relation to this big idea?
Personal growth: What can you now do based on this evidence?
Goal: What is something you want to work on or improve on in relation to this big idea?
Artifact 2
TGFU
The TGFU model by Bunker and Thorpe stands for; Teaching Games For Understanding. They identified the best way to teach games to children was these 6 steps:
- Teach games through games.
- Break games into their simplest format - then increase complexity.
- Participants are intelligent performers in games.
- Every learner is important and is involved.
- Participants need to know the subject matter.
- Need to match participants’ skill and challenge.
This strategy is a great way to gage where your students are at skill wise so you can break down each game into skill progressions to get everyone on the same level or relatively close.
In order to teach the skills for soccer, often times people think they need to be playing soccer. However that is not the case, we can gain skills and knowledge to apply to different sports by playing a variety of games associated with 4 game categories:
- Target Games in which the participant propels an object, preferably with a high degree of accuracy, at a target.
- Net/Wall Games in which the participant propels an object into space trying to make it difficult for an opponent to return it.
- Striking/Fielding Games in which the participant strikes an object so it is placed away from defenders in the field.
- Territory Games in which participants invade an opponent's territory to score.
These categories represent games and activities that are similar in skill and structure, by exposing kids to these games they gain knowledge and skills for sports without even playing them. Learning off ball movements in a game such as invisible ball tag transfers to territory invasion games such as; soccer, basketball, hockey, lacrosse etc..
By teaching games for understanding we can reach all skill levels, we can split the class into groups once we've seen their skill levels by the initial game and break them up accordingly. We can put some of the more skilled athletes in with the less experienced (provided they are a good student and model) to help them progress and be a demonstration to help the others or we can split them into a more advanced group and a developing group. Both will end up with the same result and teaching one will just have more task progressions than the other.