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During school based teaching I observed Tom Murphy* and assessed his movement ability through observation and devised an approach to help him move often and well.

Tom moved to Ireland from New Jersey, when he was just 3 years old. He now lives in Togher with his parents and one of his older sisters. His other sister is studying in America. His mother works from home as a professional artist and his father is employed at a local factory. Tom says he has a great relationship with his family even though he occasionally bickers with his sisters.

Tom is an exceptionally polite and well-spoken child. Throughout our school based teaching he was engaged and enthusiastic. His teacher confirmed that he has a positive attitude and sunny disposition in each of his classes. Tom mixes well with his peers and appears to have a wide social circle and many friends in his class.

Tom enjoys his PE classes because he loves sport and physical activity. He likes having time outside of the classroom to run around and have fun. After school Tom plays Gaelic football and soccer with local clubs in Togher. His favourite position is in goal because he likes diving for the ball.

Tom’s favourite school subjects are art, music and PE. He plays a huge variety of musical instruments and, according to his teacher, is exceptionally talented. He likes the practical aspects of each of the above subjects. Tom dislikes maths because he finds it boring and difficult. He studies for his tests by reading aloud while walking around his room. I believe Tom would score quite highly in bodily-kinaesthetic and/or musical-rhythmic intelligences because of his learning methods (Gardner, 1993). He says he finds it difficult to sit still while he’s studying because he gets distracted and bored very quickly.

Through my observation I could see that Tom has exceptional physical literacy. He moves well and has great agility. He is quick on his feet and well balanced. I imagine his soccer and football training has influenced this ability. During the dance classes with UCC students, he suggested innovative and creative ideas for steps and clearly enjoyed the lessons. He was one of the few students that was consistently moving in time with the music. After talking to him, I discovered his favourite section was the pathways station. His least favourite station was shapes/stretches because there wasn’t enough movement.

I noticed that Tom needs to physically attempt an activity before fully understanding it. For example, when I was teaching him relay changeover technique he was trying to mirror my actions almost subconsciously, while I was describing the correct positioning. Once I had given him feedback at the beginning, he needed no further correction. He grasps concepts very quickly and could effectively recall the technique throughout the lesson.

If I was Tom’s teacher, I would try to incorporate movement and physical activity into classroom based classes because he learns most effectively while moving. In my opinion classes centred around learner-designed or discovery teaching style would suit Tom best (Mosston, 2002). These style classes would challenge Tom’s creative side while fulfilling his desire to move. Tom would learn by discovering and practicing his own methods to complete a task while also simultaneously teaching and learning from his classmates.

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The only learning wall that I felt aided our teaching was the digital learning wall for middle distance peer teaching. This learning wall included the same components as the physical walls but also had a couple of videos to aid our explanations.

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I personally found the learning wall to be a complete waste of time. I spent hours developing colourful learning walls to map out our plan for the lesson, and enable us to share our learning intentions with the class. However, we only needed to refer to it at the beginning and end of each lesson. I believe that the lesson would have been just as effective and successful without the learning walls.

When teaching a specific technique in a class, I incorporated the teaching points on the learning wall to enhance pupil learning. We drew student attention to these pages at the beginning of the lessons so they could refer back to them during the class. I also printed 2 copies of each learning wall, so it could be stuck at each end of the hall and visible to all. (please see example sheet from relay learning wall)

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I love your enthusiasm! If you try holding your arm like this instead you'll move even faster! Your energy is fanastic!

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Great movement Tom! Try lifting your knees higher to warm up your legs better. Keep up the good use of space!

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All names included in this assignment are pseudonyms to protect each individual's identity.

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Cheering on your teammates is a great idea! Just make sure you stay back out of their way while they’re running. Keep up the fantastic support!

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I would then keep an eye on the student so I could then praise them for their improvement later in the class.

Other examples of feedback include:

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Excellent hand placement Mike*! You have your hand up nice and high. Next time try keep your fingers together to make it easier for the person passing the baton. Your follow through is brilliant, keep it up!

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Roger (2011) discussed the importance of feedback in the classroom. He recommends being specific and relevant when delivering feedback. He also advises teachers to give positive feedback by spotting the students doing something good. I try to build on that advice by providing feedback through the Burger Method as mentioned by Kyriacou (1995). Essentially, this includes giving the participant a positive comment about their performance, followed by an aspect of their performance that could be improved and conclude with another positive reinforcement.

For example, when teaching middle distance technique, I could say:

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I asked this question in both peer and school based teaching. It encouraged students to critically analyse their techniques and evaluate their own performances. They needed to reflect on the coaching points and assess whether they were incorporating each of them into their skill execution.

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Q4. Why do you think we pass the baton like this?

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Q4. Why do you think we pass the baton like this?

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I asked this question during our school based teaching. I encouraged students to analyse the technique they were being taught and spot the positives as well as grasping the importance of maintaining the technique. They were also able to suggest alternative techniques that might work even better.

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Q3. What does Rudisha's technique look like?

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Q3. What does Rudisha's technique look like?

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Due to technical difficulties we were unable to play the video for the boys in primary school however it was extremely effective in the peer teaching class. This is an example of a leading question. It encouraged the students to actually analyse the video instead of passively watching it. It also allowed the students to pick out the coaching points for middle distance technique themselves.

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Since this is a learning experience for us as well as the students I felt it was important to collect feedback from as many sources as possible. I found that asking the pupils what they enjoyed and didn’t enjoy during the lesson provided some interesting insights and presented me with a different perspective. For instance, after our relay lesson the general feedback from students was that they wished they could have raced the length of the hall instead of the shorter drills we carried out. I was able to convey the safety issues with their idea and so justify our activity selection.

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I have developed the bad habit of frequently asking this question after introducing a new activity and explaining what to do. Students inevitably nod their heads and confirm yes before launching into the activity and sharply revealing that no, they absolutely don’t understand. This is an example of an ineffective closed question. Instead I should ask students spot check questions about what they are about to do. Examples such as: “what are you going to do first?” “what should you do once you’ve completed this?” “What would be the best way to do this?”

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I have identified my questioning strategy as an area of my biopedagogy that needs improvement and development. I’ve noticed that I often focus on giving/sending my message to students without actually checking that the message is being received correctly by them. I’m trying to teach without assessing whether the students are actually learning or not.

Throughout this module I believe I have improved but am well aware that further development is needed. I wanted to give the answers instead of letting them try find them themselves.

I generally ask questions at the start and end of the lesson and while introducing a task mid class.

I question learners to determine their level of comprehension, their current knowledge of a new topic, what they have learned from me and their opinion on the activity.

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According to Rogers, (2011) positive discipline is about creating the best possible environment for teaching and learning, so that behavioural correction is given in a way that minimises stress, and takes into account the self-esteem of those being corrected.

As a group we attempted to make our lesson environments safe and welcoming for all. I consciously made an effort to smile and be friendly with each student even when correcting their behaviour. I realise that I need to improve my methods of disciplining the students. For example, during the school based classes I often found myself trying to shout over the group when introducing a new topic instead of using ‘Loud Silence’ to get the groups attention. However, when correcting an individual’s behaviour I feel I did well. For instance, some students liked to run up and jump off the walls during less structured warm-up activities. I called over the student and corrected the behaviour, not the person and explained why they should decline the inclination to hop off the walls in the future.

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Both Kyriacou (1997, 1998) and Cowley (2001) cite preparation and organisation as characteristics of an effective and successful teacher. In his book, Classroom Behaviour, Rogers (2011) discusses the importance of preparation for classroom management. He makes the point that the better organised a teacher is, the less time they spend trying to figure out what to do next, and so the less time students spend bored, distracted and off task.

In my experience, the better prepared we were as teachers and as a team, the smoother our class went. When everyone knew exactly what was expected of them and were familiar with the order of events and timing of the lesson we had excellent transitions between activities and very little stalling or confusion.

The one week we were slightly less organised the class was chaotic and frantic, resulting in much confusion of both students and teachers. That week was a valuable lesson and we learned to not underestimate the power of preparation.

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In our first peer teaching class, we laid out our cones and bibs as soon as possible in an attempt to be organised. However, our fool proof idea made fools of us and the equipment became a safety hazard as students were running around the area for warm up and tripping over bibs and cones needed for the main body of the lesson. We learned from our mistakes and became proficient at working as a team and laying out equipment while the teacher explaining the activity had the learners gathered. This made the lesson flow much more smoothly. We had less safety hazards and little delay in switching between activities as a result of managing our timing of equipment placement.

We also used additional equipment to make our games and activities safer. For example, in our sprint start lesson during our school based teaching, we used cones to mark both the finish line and a slowdown line. The idea was that students race to the finish line and should be walking by the time they reached the slow down line. This reduced the risk of students crashing into the walls.

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During preparation for each lesson I developed activity sheets for any students unable to participate in the physical class to fill out. This ensured those students were still engaged and learning about the topic of the class, but also not getting up to any mischief when the teacher’s attention was elsewhere.

I was thankful for my foresight because for our first 2 classes we had a number of students who were unable to take part. During the class I was able to spend some time with them going through the activity sheets and ensuring they were learning. I was also able to target their literacy and numeracy skills through the sheets.

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Very early on in the module we realised that it was easier to manage the group when they were split into smaller numbers. In our peer teaching classes, we began to split the group so each teacher was teaching a group of 8-10. We found this set up mutually beneficial: the teacher had less students to monitor and students had more time with teacher attention, and

During placement quickly realised making groups even smaller made life much easier for everyone. For example, in our sprint start class we assigned a teacher to groups of 3-4 while we trialled a Reciprocal and Self Check teaching style (Mosston and Ashworth, 2002). In this situation students attempted to teach each other the crouch start technique after watching a teacher demonstration. The teachers monitored their group and ensured the students stayed on task and were correctly guiding and correcting each other. We found this method very successful because students needed to pay close attention to teacher demonstration and developed their literacy skills through group discussion regarding the skill.

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Where Can You Plan for Numeracy and Literacy?

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Where Can You Plan for Numeracy and Literacy?

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We used a literacy and numeracy tool developed by Chambers and McCarthy (2016) to plan for literacy and numeracy. We improved our ability to incorporate these skills into our lessons over the course of our placement with guidance from peers and lecturers. The development of literacy and numeracy skills of children is a specific aim of the Primary PE Curriculum (1999) and so for this reason we endeavoured to incorporate games that challenged our students’ problem solving, comprehension, and expressive skills into our lesson plans.

For example, in our final lesson I came up with the idea of the Sum Relay: students ran to retrieve sheets of paper (with a sum printed on each) from one end of the hall and return them to their teammates on the other side. Once all papers were collected students needed to complete each sum and stick the sheets to the wall in order from smallest to largest based on the answer of each sum. Students needed to work and communicate as a team to quickly and effectively complete the task. We found this task was a huge success, students quickly grasped the concept of the game and were adequately challenged by the activity.

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How Did The Primary School Curriculum Inform Your Planning? 

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How Did The Primary School Curriculum Inform Your Planning? 

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As a group we found the NCCA publications: Primary School PE Curriculum (1999), Physical Education Teacher Guidelines (1999) and The Introduction to Primary School Curriculum (1999) very informative. Collectively, they gave us a better understanding of what level to pitch our lessons and what to select as the focus for our lessons.

The PE Teacher Guidelines (1999), mentions the importance of child-centred education, so we aimed to set the students in the middle of their learning process. We set lessons to encourage the exploration and discovery of the best methods of executing fundamental movement skills of walking, running & changing direction through a wide range of informal and fun games and activities. We wanted to foster an appreciation of athletics within our students while enabling them to enjoy the process and experience achievement through movement as recommended by the Teacher Guidelines Document (1999).

We incorporated the following broad learning objective into all our lessons:

“The physical education curriculum should enable the child to experience and develop an understanding of the use of space, speed, effort, direction and level in the performance of actions”

Primary School Curriculum: Physical Education, (1999), p.12.

The Introduction to Primary School Curriculum (1999) informed us of the aims, principles and features of the overall primary school curriculum. Basically, we want to celebrate the uniqueness of each child and encourage their natural curiosity while preparing each child for lifelong learning (Department of Education, 1999). We attempted to apply this aim to each of our lesson plans and ultimately our lessons.

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Rogers, B. (2011). Classroom behaviour. 1st ed. London: SAGE.
Rogers, B. (1996). Managing teacher stress. 1st ed. London: Pitman.
Claxton, G. (2003). Cited in Hastings, S. (2003) Questioning [online]. Available from: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=381755 [Accessed 26th April 2012]
Coleman, M. and Henninger, M. (2016). Don't look now - "Busy, Happy, and Good" is still very much alive. [online] Pelinks4u.org. Available at: http://www.pelinks4u.org/articles/henninger1008.htm [Accessed 7 Oct. 2016].
Cowley, S. (2001). Getting the buggers to behave. 1st ed. London: Continuum.
Gardner, H. (1993). Frames of mind. 1st ed. New York, NY: BasicBooks.
Hastings, S. (2003). Questions. TES.
Kyriacou, C. (1995). Essential teaching skills. 2nd ed. Cheltenham, U.K.: Stanley Thornes.

Kyriacou, C. (1997). Effective teaching in schools. 2nd ed. Oxford: Stanley Thornes.

Mosston, M. and Ashworth, S. (2002). Teaching physical education. 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: B. Cummings.
NCCA. (2006). Popping the question: Assessment for Learning. info@ncca.