Group teaching at Key stage 2 National curriculum was performed over a four week period consisting of two hours per week of teaching and observation. Over the four weeks we covered; Agility Balance Co-ordination The fourth week involved inc
Working with children Word count - 2498 (Not including references)
Introduction
The purpose of the working with children module is for students to investigate effective teaching practice through placement in a local primary school.
Group teaching at Key stage 2 National curriculum was performed over a four week period consisting of two hours per week of teaching and observation.
Over the four weeks we covered;
* Agility
* Balance
* Co-ordination
The fourth week involved incorporating all the skills from the previous weeks into a mini Olympics style session.
Working with children
The national curriculum provides a framework to enable students to obtain and develop a number of qualities. In PE this includes;
* Helping students develop personally and socially by enabling them to work as individuals and in groups and teams. Students take on varying roles and responsibilities including leadership, coaching and officiating, learning how to be effective in competitive situations.
* Developing student's competence and confidence to take part in a range of physical activities both in and out of school.
* Developing a wide range of skills and the ability to use tactics, strategies and compositional ideas to perform successfully. When they are performing, they think about what they are doing, analyse the situation and make decisions. They also reflect on their own and others' performances and find ways to improve them.
As a result, they develop the confidence to take part in different physical activities and learn about the value of healthy, active lifestyles.
(curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/)
Were the lessons National Curriculum appropriate?
All lesson plans were devised considering the national curriculum. The basis for deciding what to include in lessons were based on whether the activity would enable individual and group participation, whether individuals would have the opportunity to experience leadership, develop confidence, build on existing skills and have the chance to make their own decisions on correcting and improving physical performance.
The work placement allowed me to gain experience and learn skills in class-management and communication.
What is communication?
Communication can be defined as;
'sending, giving, or exchanging information and ideas, which is often expressed nonverbally and verbally.
(http://www.relationship-with-self.com/definitionofcommunication.html)
Verbal and Non-verbal communication
Argyle (1994) describes Verbal communication as expressing words through speaking whereas Non-verbal communication is the act of expressing words through facial gestures (smiling, frowning) and body language (arms crossed, hand signals).
'When students are not doing what is intended the problem is usually an indication of poor communication'
Silverman and Ennis (2003)
Theories and concepts
Argyle (1994) explains that there are several different kinds of verbal utterance. One of them including, Orders and instructions as a means to influence the behaviour of others either by being gently persuasive or authoritarian. Orders may be disguised as suggestions or questions to persuade children to engage in activities.
Argyle (1994) describes 'Gaze' as an non-verbal signal as it shows the direction of the gazers attention. By gazing at a particular area where an activity is to take place, children will notice and pay attention to the area they are supposed to be.
Argyles model of communication(1994)
.
(Teacher - me) (Children)
* The message is sent - appropriate medium is selected
* Message is received and decoded - receiver comprehends language used by the sender
* Idea understood - receiver correctly interprets the message
* Feedback - feedback provided by the receiver reassures the sender that the message has been understood
* A communication loop is formed
How is Argyles model of communication (1994) relevant to teaching children?
Argyles model of communication is particularly relevant to teaching children in a ...
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Argyles model of communication(1994)
.
(Teacher - me) (Children)
* The message is sent - appropriate medium is selected
* Message is received and decoded - receiver comprehends language used by the sender
* Idea understood - receiver correctly interprets the message
* Feedback - feedback provided by the receiver reassures the sender that the message has been understood
* A communication loop is formed
How is Argyles model of communication (1994) relevant to teaching children?
Argyles model of communication is particularly relevant to teaching children in a physical education setting as it explains the instruction for an activity or game to be carried out in a particular manner. Whether the information is delivered and understood by the children is clear when the task is either carried out correctly or not.
Hills, P, J. (1986) uses the communications model of Shannon and Weaver (1949) to explain education. The model explains that the teacher supplies and manages the information and delivers it to the student, also inputting their own attitudes of the subject matter. Coding then takes place which is the process of making the input visible to the student. The student can then decode and understand what they have been told.
Feedback from student to teacher is an essential part to the educational communication process to provide the teacher with information on how the message has been received. Feedback enables the teacher to adapt or change the input to produce a more effective learning process.
Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988)
Jasper, M (2003)
Kolb's learning cycle (1984)
(www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/.../kolb/static_version.php)
) Experiencing or immersing oneself in the doing of the task
2) Reflecting or stepping back from the task and reviewing what has been done and experienced
3) Conceptualisation involves interpreting the events that have been noticed and understanding the relationship among them.
4) Planning enables taking the new understanding and translates it into predictions about what is likely to happen next or what actions should be taken to refine the way the task is handled.
How is Kolbs (1984) - Experiential learning relevant to teaching children?
Kolb (1984) provides a good example of children learning in physical education. A task in physical education involves physically doing something. The teacher and the learner can then see what has happened and what actions should then be taken.
A good example of when experiential learning occurred during my placement was during the first session with the children. The task was to teach the children the prepared lesson plan. Before the session I didn't know how children would react to my instruction. When reflecting after the session, I realised children were eager to do all the tasks they were set. From this I learnt not to worry so much about the lesson plans in the future.
(Honey and Mumford (1982)
Honey and Mumford (1982) identify individuals learning preferences. These include;
* Activist - learns from doing and experiencing
* Reflector - observes others and reflects
* Theorist - wants to understand the reasons, concepts and relationships
* Pragmatist - likes to 'have a go' to see if things work
How does teaching children relate to Honey and Mumfords Typology of learners?
Each student that I was teaching had a different learning preference. To incorporate the different learning styles into sessions, demonstrations of tasks were provided for reflectors, activists and pragmatists were catered for by actually doing and having a go at the tasks and theorists had the opportunity to ask and answer questions on why the tasks were relevant and why we were doing them.
Differentiation
Whipp (2004) explains to be effective; teachers need to be able to respond to the learning needs of their students by using teaching strategies that are responsive to a diverse clientele.
Whilst working with children I learnt the importance of differentiation. Each pupil had a different level of ability to carry out tasks they were set. Some found tasks a lot easier than others which left some of the children bored and others embarrassed that they couldn't do the activity very well. To prevent this problem in the future I will provide more help to certain pupils within the group, set a range of different tasks for pupils of different ability and set open-ended tasks, allowing pupil response at different levels.(the same task will be accomplished at differing levels of expertise.)
Another example of when differentiation was used was in Session two - Balance (Appendix B). When catching, students would begin using two hands, then only one hand, and then try standing on one leg and catching with one hand. This allowed pupils who found catching difficult to practice the basic skill and those who found it easy, to increase the level of difficulty of the task and increase their capability.
There were times during sessions when particular groups of friends wanted to stay together when dividing into teams. In the final session, which was mini Olympics (Appendix D) teams were selected at random. This was purposely to separate friends so they could learn to work with other members in their group.
According to Csikszentmihalyi (1975), one experiences anxiety if exposed to a situation where one's skill level is lower than the environmental challenge level one faces.
Csikszentmihalyi (1975)
The graph above Csikszentmihalyi (1975) is a good example of working with children of varying ability. Throughout the four week placement, there were children noticeably bored in some game situations whereas others seemed anxious in the same situation.
An example of this was during the beanbag game (Appendix D). There was one particular child who found balancing a beanbag on their head easy and appeared bored after they had done it once whereas another child consistently dropped the beanbag and was anxious to try again after their first go.
Week One - Agility
Graham (1992) describes children entering a physical education class as problematic as they are often excited and in a hurry to begin.
For the first session, I immediately instructed the children to stand in a line and listen. By doing this they would begin the session faster. Each week they knew to do the same thing.
As this was our first meeting with the group, we began the session by introducing ourselves and then introducing the topic of the session which was agility. To gain an understanding of the groups knowledge we asked questions to determine whether the group knew anything about agility. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the majority of the group had an idea. When asked to give examples of sports where agility is most practiced, all of the pupils were eager to give an answer; so much that they were jumping up and down.
(See Appendix A for the activities of the session.)
My role during the session was to take lead of the cool down (See Appendix A)
The activity used for this component of the session was based upon previous experience as a child which I found enjoyable and which I believe is a suitable and prime example of developing and promoting agility. Also as a child, cool downs weren't the most enjoyable so I felt using a game to finish the session would mean a lot more to the pupils.
As the activity involved a pair of pupils hooking arms to then run around and tag people I decided it would be safer for pupils of equal size to begin the game so to have the children interact with one another I asked them to organise themselves in order of height from tallest to smallest in a straight line. From this, I chose the two pupils in the middle of the line to begin the game.
There were factors during the session that proved successful. These included the reactions of pupils during the activities such as laughter, excitement and cheering. This proved to me that the pupils were enjoying the activities. The non-verbal cues of jumping up and down relate to Argyles model of communication (1994). The jumping up and down and wide-eyed expressions were used to accompany the laughing and cheering.
I noticed a particular pupil who had been disruptive throughout the session had decided to cheat in order to win the game. The other pupils ceased to notice so I let it slide. Reflecting on this I should have stopped any cheating as now the pupil may cheat more often and become more of a disruption in other lessons.
Was there anything I felt didn't go well?
The peer observation sheet (Appendix A) has highlighted factors which could be changed in order to provide a more effective teaching process. This includes asking children to wait until the end of explanations before asking questions and breaking complex skills into smaller parts to enable children who are less capable to learn more easily.
Space
The space allocated was limited but used well in terms of spreading out and making the most of what was available.
Numbers
The group altered from 11/12 each week as one pupil had a guitar lesson. When numbers were odd in a team, another player would go twice.
Equipment
Equipment was kept to one side until required. This was a way from the court so it wouldn't be a hazard.
Week two - Balance
My role for this week's session was to lead the Swamp and stepping stones game. Some children found this game very enjoyable whereas others were frustrated, particularly when other students were shouting at them to hurry up. There was a lot of tension between some students so to help resolve this, I told them, to all calm down and if there was any more shouting, the team would have to go to the beginning and start again.
The idea for this component of the session was another game I had experienced as a child. I used it to build experience of teamwork and learn how to communicate within a difficult situation. It was clear that communication was bad to start with when students were arguing. But when told of the consequences of arguing they quickly learnt to talk to each other with more respect.
Week three - Co-ordination
My role for the co-ordination session was to lead the 'Time bomb' game. This involved the group standing in a large circle and beginning at ten and counting down to one whilst throwing the ball to any other member of the group. When 'one' is called the time bomb goes off and the person with the ball has to drop the ball and run around the circle before the ball has been passed all the way around the circle.
This game is another I enjoyed as a child, which is why I incorporated it into the session.
Week four - Mini-olympics
My role for this week's mini Olympics session was the 'speed bounce' race. This idea was adapted from similar games and races I did as a child involving dribbling a ball, one of my favourite elements in a race. The race involved two teams. Each player dribbled a basketball between cones until they reached the speed bounce strip where they had to jump ten times as fast as they could before passing the ball back to their next team player and running back towards the start.
Rink (1993) cited in Bailey (2001) states that 'grouping is a powerful tool that a teacher can use to influence the learning process.'
Bailey (2001) lists criteria for organizing groups. These are;
* Ability
* Gender
* Developmental
* Friendship
* Random
Rink (1993) explains that when given the choice, pupils tend to group themselves in terms of similar ability in order to reduce the stress or working alongside more able peers.
Conclusion
The working with children module has allowed me to realise the importance of good communication and how to manage in a teaching environment. I have discovered that diversity is an important aspect of teaching and that to teach effectively, a large number of factors need to be considered including each individual's needs, behaviour, discipline and specific praise. It is important that a rapport is developed with students and teacher.
References
Argyle, M. (1994) (5th Ed) the Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
Armstrong, M. (2007) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Tenth Edidtion. Kogan Page. London, United Kingdom. Pgs. 552-553
Bailey, R (2001) Teaching Physical Education. A handbook for primary and secondary teachers. Kogan Page Ltd. London, United Kingdom.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1975) Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass Publishers
Graham, G (1992) Teaching Children Physical Education. Becoming a Master Teacher. Human Kinetics. Leeds, England.
Hills, P, J. (1986) Teaching, learning and communication. Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row, Beckenham, Kent.
Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1986) The Manual of Learning Styles. Edition 2, 84 pages
Jasper, M (2003) Beginning Reflective Practice. Foundations in Nursing and Healthcare. Nelson Thomes Ltd. Cheltenham, United Kingdom.
Silverman, S.J., & Ennis, C.D. (Eds) (2003). Student Learning in Physical Education: Applying Research to Enhance Instruction.
Whipp, P., 2004. Differentiation in outcomes focused physical education: Pedagogical rhetoric and reality. The University of Western Australia
Paper presented at the AARE International Educational Research Conference, Melbourne, Nov-Dec 2004.
Websites
curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/
www.liverpool.gov.uk/Images/tcm21-97510.doc
http://www.relationship-with-self.com/definitionofcommunication.html
www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/.../kolb/static_version.php
Georgina Bailey
