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Week 7 & 8

I enjoyed the last two weeks of hurdling as it involved a lot of fun games and team work. I liked this as although it was fun and with our friends, it was still focused on the techniques and how well we performed the activities and cues. We performed a peer assessment activity, where I had to observe my partner and let her know her strengths and weaknesses, and where I felt she could improve, while also giving her some help and advice on how I thought she could improve. My partner also did the same for me and I found this extremely beneficial as it allowed me to see and identify the areas where I could improve. While engaging in the quiz at the end, it allowed me to refresh my knowledge around all of the cues and teaching points for hurdling and so I ended this block of learning, full of knowledge around the area of hurdling. I look forward to using this knowledge in the future, in my teaching career and also I may take up this area as an extra curricular activity as I really enjoyed this module.

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WEEK  7 & 8

For these two weeks, seeing as we were coming to the conclusion of our study of hurdling, I decided that we would recap and go over all of the areas. We revised the legs and arm techniques, while also focusing on the direction of where our eyes were looking. I set students the challenge of trying to perfect their techniques. Students in pairs, were each given out a peer assessment sheet, where they had to observe their partners and fill out the sheet. This allowed students to get feedback on their strengths and weaknesses and so show and help them on what and how they could improve on. After this, we did various fun games and relays that involved using all of the techniques. Students were rewarded for when they continued to use the correct technique and received more points during the games. At the end of our final lab, we had a short quiz where students were in groups of fours. They had to buzz in to answer the various questions around hurdling, technique and team work that we focused on throughout the eight weeks. This was followed by a short warm down, focusing on the arms and leg stretches.

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Week 5 & 6

I found these two weeks much more difficult than the last four as it the arm and hand techniques. Also, I found it hard to keep my torso upright as I was trying to focus on my arms, so I found myself looking down a lot of the time and then moving forward. However, I enjoyed the activities as they were intense but entertaining as it was funny watching everyone perform them, especially the one on the ground where we had to just move our arms, as it looked like everyone was exerting so much energy but yet they weren't moving. It was nice seeing all of the previous weeks work coming together as we later practiced on the ladders, then the yellow ladders and eventually we used the normal ladders, that were much more challenging. However, all of our classmates were up for the challenge and tried extremely hard to try and execute the task on hand. The demonstrations again were very helpful as it allowed us to break down the cues of the technique. At the end of the class, like the first week, we had to engage in a self-reflection, where we had to see what level of TPSR we felt we were at at the end of the lesson. For myself, I felt that I moved up to level three of self-direction, as I took it upon myself to practice after the lab the technique of the arms, hands and torso. Also, during the lab I stayed on task the whole time and used my initiative to practice at any stage I got. The warm down was conducted between ourselves and the teacher, as it involved static stretches. I must admit that I am looking forward to next week, where hopefully we can see our overall improvement and get to practice the hands and leg techniques together, and try to perfect the techniques while also having fun and enjoying ourselves.

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Week 5 & 6

For these two weeks, I decided as the coach to focus on the upper body part in hurdling. This included the torso, the hands and head. To warm up we revised the parts from the previous two weeks, looking at the legs and footwork. Students had to engage in warm-up activities that involved these skills to refresh their minds. When looking at the hands part of hurdling, I demonstrated the correct technique where I showed students that their hand and legs must work in rotation and be opposite to each other. Also, I got one of the students who participates in hurdling outside of the class, to demonstrate while I pointed out the cues while focusing in on the hands. Then students had to practice in their pairs. To try and get students to be as powerful and as fast as they could to generate power, students had to lie on the floor and try and pumps their hands as much as they could with the correct technique. This gave students as change to improve their hand and arm technique, without having to remember the leg techniques, so as to not load them with too much information at once. Then we did some activities using the ladders and then onto the small yellow hurdles, where the main focus was on the students hand technique. Once I felt students had mastered this area, I allowed them to try the normal hurdles. While students had to use their knowledge from the last two weeks on the legs, the main focus was on their upright torso, along with the hand movements, in sync with their feet. Overall, I feel that students enjoyed this, as they were able to see the various cues and techniques together, that resulted in executing the hurdles correctly

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Week 3 & 4

I found this week much harder than last week, but on the other side it was much more interesting. I really enjoyed the warm up activities as they were intense, but also fun and related to the skill and technique of the leg, in which we looked into later on in the lab. As I said previously, I hadn't had much experience of hurdling so I was new to the whole idea around the technique of the trail and lead leg. I was a bit nervous at the start, incase I wouldn't be able to execute the task. However, the demonstrations by the teacher, along with one of the students who performed athletics herself outside of class, helped me to understand and see the correct technique. We were in pairs, so I focused on the trail leg, while my partner focused on the lead leg. After both of us practicing each one, with the teacher clearly observing and helping us, we came back together and we thought each other what we had learned. I enjoyed this part, as it was a change from the usual teacher domination within the class. I definitely grew in confidence throughout this lab with practice and from the help and feedback from my partner and peers. At the end, the teacher questioned us on the cues for both of the legs. Thankfully she did this, as it reminded me of the correct cues. I was extremely tired after these two classes, but this was a good thing as it showed that I did a lot of work throughout. I am looking forward to the weeks ahead.

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Week 3 & 4

During these two weeks, I decided to focus on footwork and getting students to try and get their knees as high as they could. For this we warmed up by getting students heart rate up while focusing on the specific drill with their footwork. Students had to engage in a warm up activity that involved students having to run around with high knees while trying not to get caught by the tagger. If students did not perform the high knee skill, they had to step outside the circle and do 10 jumping jacks. Moving onto our footwork, once students have realised that they need to get their knees as high as they can, we decided to look at the lead leg and trail leg, which is sometimes called the 'chicken wing'. We set out the hurdles and students were in pairs, where one had to focus on the trail leg and their partner on the lead leg. We demonstrated the technique of both legs to every student, but one partner took the responsibility to focus on their specific leg and then they had to teach it to each other. The students seemed to enjoy this part as it allowed them to take responsibility for their own learning while engaging in some explorative learning. We cooled down together as a whole group, and I questioned students on the cues for both legs so to see had they learned the correct points, while doing some static stretches.

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Week 1 & 2

For our first week of athletics, I chose to introduce the students to the whole area around athletics while focusing in on hurdling. We looked at some videos of famous hurdlers competing at the Olympic Games, while allowing the students to engage in explorative learning, where they tried to distinguish some of the teaching cues themselves. I will now discuss how we focused on introducing hurdles and using the ladders and small hurdles during the first two weeks. To warm up, students engaged in pulse-raising activities; bean-tag, while having students to perform various exercises such as hopping on one foot, high knees, bum kicks, galloping, followed by student-led dynamic stretches During our activities we used the ladders, where students were divided into groups of four, so to maximise the amount of participation. The students had to perform various activities in the ladders such as; one foot in at a time; two feet in together, and a side-way drill. Moving on from this, we began to use the small yellow hurdles, so to allow students some time to perfect there technique. I demonstrated the correct technique of hurdling from different views for the students and allowed students to ask questions. While students were doing this drill I prompted them to relax and just try to focus on getting the technique correct. After this at the end of the lesson, students had to engage in a self-reflection process using the TPSR model. Students had to state what level they felt that had progressed to. Students had to discuss with their partner about what they would like to learn more in relation to hurdling and what they felt they needed to focus on as an individual. There goals for the following weeks were set and they had to state how they were going to achieve these goals.

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Week 1 & 2

After my first two weeks of athletics, I must admit that I am really starting to enjoy it. At first I was a little apprehensive as I hadn't had much experience of athletics from my own primary and secondary schools. I really enjoyed week one as we focused in on the various drills that we could do while using the ladders. I enjoyed also the warm-ups for both of these weeks as the involved fun warm-up games such as 'bean-tag' and 'rock-bridge-castle'. These focused on warming us up and on areas for hurdling without us even realising, as they wee also extremely interactive and fun. I was nervous for the activities on the ladders, as I wouldn't be known to have the best footwork when running or dancing. However, from practicing these drills over the two weeks, I can gladly say that I improved immensely. I could see the improvement in my speed and also my footwork. When performing the drills in the ladders, I found it hard to look at a point on the wall, while still performing the skill correctly. But I knew that I had to perfect this aspect as I needed it so to perform the proper size hurdles in the weeks to come. My challenge that I set myself to improve on for week 3, was to try and keep my head looking forward and not towards the ground when executing the activities on the ladder. I enjoyed moving onto the small yellow ladders as it showed us that we were progressing after all our practice. On these we tried to perform the same drills as the ladders, but I did find it harder as I had to ensure I didn't knock any of the hurdles. The teacher then showed us the technique for going over the hurdles and I found this very beneficial. We then tried to do this so to introduce this area to ourselves for next week. At the end of this, I had to write down my goal for the next few weeks while also stating how I was going to achieve them. I want to improve my area of keeping my eyes and head upright and looking forward and I will achieve this by practicing ladders and small hurdle drills at home.