Teaching Sport Skills and Strategies in May term

Physical education majors practiced teaching a wide variety of sport skills and strategies in the May term class this spring.  Students were required to teach at least one sport they were familiar with and one they were not familiar with in this course. Traditional American sports, such as basketball, volleyball, soccer, flag football, bowling, softball/wiffleball are included, in addition to sports popular in other countries  like team handball, rugby, cricket, netball and tchoukball.

Preparation for teaching includes a sport knowledge overview chart, a detailed written lesson plan and a basic rule handout. Each lesson must include skill practice, drills leading up to game play and game play. When it is their turn to teach, the GC student who is teaching makes all the decisions, prepares equipment, manages student behavior and officiates/manages conflicts during game play. Also, this teacher develops a performance rubric for the sport and uses it in assessing student performance during the lesson.

This is a good class for May term because there are three hour class blocks in the morning. The students not only enjoy being the teacher for a change, but they also enjoy fierce competition with each other when they are pretending to be the middle or high school age students.