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Sport is not for everyone, but physical activity is something everything should benefit from. As a PE teacher, my main aim to promote the benefits associated with physical activity and encouraging students to live an active lifestyle. Therefore, my philosophy in PE is to give students a sample of a broad curriculum. This increases the chances of them finding a sport/activity they enjoy which may lead to participation outside the PE classroom. The adventure strand exposes the pupils to a process of keeping active that they may not have experienced or thought about before. Given that the Junior Cycle students are young adolescents which brings about social, emotional and physical development, the adventure strand offers an opportunity to develop in a way that will benefit the students both academically and physically. For example, the JCPE (2003) syllabus explains that adventure can develop qualities such as self-reliance, self-confidence, responsibility, regard for others and respect for the environment. This scheme will provide learners who do not participate in sport or physical activity outside of school an opportunity to shine in an activity that each and every learner has no experience in. Co-operative learning methodology will be adopted and used throughout the duration of the 6 weeks. This will benefit especially the learners who are usually not into the more ‘generic sports’ of games such as hurling and football. (Strachan, 2000)

The Co-operative Learning instructional model will be used to deliver the content for this scheme of work. Johnson, Johnson & Johnson-Holubec (1994) define co-operative learning as a successful learning strategy in which small teams, each with students of different ability levels, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. This instructional model focuses very much on the Affective Learning Domain in the sense that students work through a given assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete that given assignment (Luttrell & Chambers, 2013). Positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, social skills and face-to-face interaction (Johnson, Johnson & Johnson-Holubec, 1994) are the five key elements that are necessary for successful co-operative learning, and the way that students interact with each other is as important as the content learned. Although the co-operative learning instructional model is often very focused on Team Challenges in the PE class, I believe this particular instructional may also be of benefit when introducing students to the strand of orienteering. As Kagan (1992) found, co-operative learning can be incorporated to any PE context as long as the simply idea of co-operation is stressed to the students in advance of the lesson. Co-operative learning focuses very much on the ability of the group to accomplish tasks by working together and co-operating (Luttrell & Chambers, 2013; Gunter, Estes & Mintz, 2007). Research on the Cooperative Learning Model suggests that it enhances young peoples’ engagement with and participation in physical education (Dyson & Strachan, 2000) and so this will benefit especially the learners who are usually not into the more common field sports such as rugby and hockey.

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1. Meet Freya:

Freya is a ten year old fourth class attending Attending Cork Educate Together National School. From chatting to freya I discovered that she has taken part in physical activity all her life. Two main activities in freyas life have been gymnastics and wall-climbing. Crucially freya had experience in gymnastics, which was our groups chosen activity, but she had given up the sport as she did not feel she competent at the sport. I aimed to re-egnite her love for gymnastics by creating fun and challenging classes for her to enjoy. Over the 3 weeks I discovered how freya is a visual learner(Ried 1995) and learning ques such as a learning wall and activity cards would aid her learning greatly.

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2. Wall-Climbing:

From chatting to Freya at the end of each class I have discovered her passion for wall-climbing. She has been doing the activity in her local club for the last two years, once a week. She has told me her favourite part is the free wall where there is no harness used and you can attempt different trials on the wall as many times as you want. She told me at the free wall its much more fun as she can talk to her friends more. This highlighted to me that the social aspect of the club was crucial part to Freya’s interest in wall climbing. It was clear from our discussions that Freya was clearly an outgoing and chatty student, to incorporate her interests and keep her engaged in our classes I realised teamwork activities would be essential. From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it can be assumed that Freya was motivated by the social aspects of her club and in school  (Taormina & Gao, 2013). We incorporated this into our lessons via the use of partner balances where students would have to communicate with one another in order for the balance to work.

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3. Gymnastics Linked To Wall Climbing:

Secondly, along with her social needs (Turner, 2018) Freya also enjoyed the physical challenge of wall-climbing. She confessed to me that she was not as good as some of the older kids and stated her aim to complete ‘the blue trial’ on the harness wall. I realised that I could relate the benefits of performing gymnastics, such as strength, balance and co-ordination, to her aim of completing ‘the blue trial’. When doing the single balances such as the ‘arm chair’ and the ‘candle stick’ I reminded Freya how this would help her when she next takes on ‘the blue trial’.

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4. Previous experiences with Gymnastics:

When asking about Freyas previous experience with gymnastics she stated that she had taken part in the local club for some time but gave up two years ago. She stated the she “was not good enough at it” to keep up the activity. From hearing this I realised that for Freya to really enjoy gymnastics in a school environment it would be important for her to feel competent at it. I feared that if she felt she wasn’t any good her engagement may decline. Encouragement would play a key role in building her confidence in the activities. I kept a keen eye on every activity and offered guidance when needed. We realised as a group that it was important to have prepared regressions in each activity in case students, especially Freya, were finding it too difficult.

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5 Learning style:

From discussing how she felt each class went I began to comprehend freyas learning style. She said she enjoyed reading from the learning wall and looking at the images of the various activities we were going to do in class. Activity cards were a key learning que that we used throughout our lessons. Freya stated she preferred having the activity cards which had a diagram/image than the cards which just writing on them. Freya was clearly a visual learner (Ried 1995). Gaining a better understanding of the task if she saw an image or demonstration. I aimed to integrate visual ques into each lesson to satisfy freyas need for visual aid in the class.

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6. Links to Favourite subject:

Freya confined in me that her favourite subject is art, she enjoys the relaxed atmosphere and the fact that she oversees what she designs/creates. This inspired me to adapt a laissez-faire management style which would allow students take charge of the class and content. Adapting a role of a facilitator allows students to become more creative and creates a more relaxed atmosphere in the class. This would be the style used by an art teacher to allow students design and create.

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Questioning example 4

2. Understand new concepts
Effective questioning will help learners understand new concepts. When displaying the pencil roll to student I asked them to tell me the key points that we need to remember when performing the pencil roll.

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Questioning strategy
Example 2

Questioning can be used as an effective re-engagement tool by the teacher. Challenging the student mentally with compelling questioning can bring their attention back to the core focus of the lesson and prevent any disruptions or distractions. As a group we decided it would be fundamental to our lesson to keep the students engaged with strategic verbal examinations of student knowledge. Aisling implemented this skill transparently into our lesson when asking two students, who were standing to the side, talking and not taking part in the activity of pair balances, could they remember the key points of the ‘back to back arm chair’. The students immediately stopped messing and became re-engaged in the class.

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Questioning example 1

Behaviour
To prepare the students mentally for gymnastics we challenged them at the start and end of classes to think of the best way to behave in order to enjoy and perform gymnastics effectively. This mechanism aided with student participation and engagement.

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Questioning Strategy
example 3

1. Focus on well-being
To focus on the students wellbeing questions needed to be directed towards students feeling and emotions during the class. Did the students experience social, emotional, moral and spiritual growth. To understand Freya’s (case study student) emotional experience, I asked her at the end of class ‘to sum up her overall mood and feelings during the class’. (T.Lovat 2010)

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Feedback Strategy
Feedback in order to be of any use to a student must be constructive and topical. The same feedback should not be transferable from topic to topic. This means that a teacher should not be able to give the exact same feedback to a student doing basketball and to a student doing swimming. An approach I often implement into my lessons, I adopted from lecturer Artur Twomey, called ‘two stars and a wish’. This method involves pointing out to the student two things they have done well and one thing they should aim to improve on.

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Questioning example 5

Prior Knowledge
To understand students prior knowledge we asked them had they any experience in gymnastics before and more specifically if they could name our preform and rolls or balances as these were our main teaching focus.

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Feedback Examples
Pencil roll feedback,

“really good Darren, you kept your arms nice and straight. Maybe next time try to tuck your chin into your chest a bit more but that was really good body tension keep that up.”

Partner balance back to back arm chair,

“ok guys that was a really good effort ye had a really good starting position, just try to remember to keep your body nice and still keeping your muscles tensed all the time, really liked your teamwork in your last effort.”

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Strategy 1
Questioning strategy:

A unanimous decision was taken by our group that our foremost objective should be to discover students prior knowledge. In a study Contextualizing instruction: Leveraging students' prior knowledge and experiences to foster understanding of middle school science, American analysis Albert Rivett examines the importance for a teacher to fully comprehend the learners prior knowledge. Through tactical questioning and smaller groups we aimed to hear from each student on their previous experience in physical activity and more specifically gymnastics.

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1. Re-engaging tools:

A real struggle for our group was re-capturing the attention of students. Big numbers, small hall and not knowing student names made it very difficult for us to control the class. I believe that a whistle would have been essential in re-engaging students. We also learned of a new tool used by the fourth class teacher. In which she would clap a certain rhythm( 1,2 and 1,2,3) and when the students hear the teacher clap this rhythm they would respond by clapping the rhythm back, followed by complete silence.

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4.Lack Of Equipment:

Taken by surprise on the first visit to the school our group realised that it would be crucial to alter our lesson plans for a less equipped and less spacious teaching environment, a major problem currently faced by physical educators world wide (Pühse & Gerber, 2005). To combat this we decide that it would be more efficient to split the group into four parts assigning each group one teacher, when teaching the main activities in gymnastics. I believe this was an excellent idea, not only was it the most effective way to use what little resources we had but also was the safest way possible to gymnastics in the teaching environment.

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3.Student passiveness and detachment towards subject and topic:

Unfortunately, some students would not participate our take interest in the class and certain activities. Following instructions from the teacher we did not insist or try to persuade the student to join. The teacher stated that the more pressure put on these students the more they would resent the task/activity. Instead we aimed to make the class appear fun and enjoyable in that the student will decide themselves from observing that they would like to take part. This approach involves enticing the student to decide for themselves to take on the task. The student is challenged to intrinsically motivate themselves to take on the task (decci, 1985).

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2. Student poor competency of the topic:

Although the fourth class teacher had told us that her students had taken part in a six week gymnastics programme, our group was taken by surprise by the amount of students who struggled with the tasks. It was crucial after our first week that we prepared regressions of every activity in our plans (P.Brown, 2018). This would ensure that if students were struggling we could quickly alter the activity and allow for a more inclusive lesson. In reflection I will not enter classrooms in future expecting students to have good knowledge of the subject with out testing them first.