G4 & G5 Inquiring into the concepts of SPACE in Basketball

Creating and Denying Space in G4 & G5 Basketball

(A Snapshot from my Grade 5 Unit inquiring into the creation & denial of space though the physical education learning lens of basketball)

Exploring how to turn a 'passing' lesson in basketball into a conceptually driven lesson inquiring into time and space (and possibly a 101 other concepts!)

I want students to be able to understand and play a decent game of basketball (this is a PE lesson after all). I also want the students to understand the of concept of spatial awareness and for them to develop enough depth of understanding to be able to transfer both skills and concepts to other sports and beyond. 

Prior Knowledge

At G4 & G5 hopefully students have already encountered some form of passing, dribbling, and shooting. The last lesson the students want in G4 or 5 is death by 'chest pass'!

BUT, should you need to quickly reacquaint your students to the wonders of the chest pass...

What I find works effectively is getting the more experienced players in the class to partner with the least experienced to work for a brief five minutes, one-on-one or in a small sided game, to help refresh minds on some of the intricacies of the skill. Evidence indicates that this type of learning does not benefit the more experienced student as much as the less experienced, so keep it short (long enough to keep it action packed and fun!) With the G4's I would possibly Q & A the phases of movement with the class and put the practice into a brief warm-up game, but for the G5's, they have just completed a unit focusing on peer coaching and feedback so they should have the knowledge and understanding to work collaboratively together to bring one another up to speed on a particular skill (Grade 5 Inquiring into Coaching & Feedback through the learning lens of Volleyball). 

Remember, the more the students play games, the more skillful and the deeper their understandings becomes. 

Real World Context

I have witnessed many a lesson where the pass is introduced and then the students get into 2's or 3's or 4's and practice passing the ball between them. Maybe to add a bit of excitement, passes are done against a clock, or the teacher calls for a change of direction etc. Students usually pass in silence, or if they are talking, it's probably not in the form of feedback.

As passes go, the basketball chest or bounce pass is relatively easy. When the unit starts I don't focus too much on the form of a particular pass, that will come with time spent playing. However, what I am concerned about is if the ball is catchable! Put the same stationary pass that the students have practiced standing opposite one another in a triangle or square into a game situation. Does perfect form help them? You could argue that it does, a bit... but not enough when the conditions have changed, now making that same pass and having it caught is infinity harder. Why? what's changed? 

What a great moment to get some inquiry going!

There are of course a number of factors that would influence the success of the passing of a 'catchable' ball in a game situation. But, the two I want my students to explorer are time and space. 

BANG! 

And just like that, the lessons focus has shifted from being primarily on passing to a lesson revolving round the concepts of time and space using passing as the vehicle to explorer them through. Once the students understand the bigger picture real world concepts they can apply them to a number of other sports, basketball being only one of them.

I am still playing with these two concepts, but I believe you could teach almost all aspects of basketball (or a number of other sports) at G4 and/or G5 linked to the two concepts: Creating & Denying Space.

 

Making Thinking Visible (MTV) within the Basketball Unit

 

If you've read my previous posts, you will know I am a big user of visible thinking routines.

I use two different adapted routines for this unit, the first is designed to get the students 'tuning in' to thinking about the concepts of space, whilst the second is designed to get the students reflecting about how their thinking has changed over the course of the unit. 

The G5's 'tuning in' to the concepts of creating & denying space.

The G5's 'tuning in' to the concepts of creating & denying space.

I played around with a number of different formats for this routine. Generally I divided the poster paper in 3 or 4 areas - I think in the end 3 worked the best. Section 1 was what I considered a question everyone should be able to contribute to: What is it? (creating & denying space), I felt the question would hopefully throw up any misconceptions. Section 2 was much larger, and it asked the question: What did it look like for you today? During the first few classes I would make the poster available and an option should a student want to record a memorable moment or an almost story. Section 3 was an area to add burning questions about the concepts or anything about basketball etc.

The G5's Reflecting. I took the visible thinking routine of 'I used to think / Now I think' and added a '/do' for physical education purposes: I used to think/do - I now think/do

The G5's Reflecting

Important note for those who think all this writing takes too long or valuable time away from the PE lesson... I truly believe PE should be highly active, I am not a fan of sedentary PE lessons: pens/pencils/A4 sheets of paper etc. I discovered after years of experimenting that using poster paper to do the MTV routines on was the best fit for PE. Using poster paper is fast, easily organized and the students have lots of room to express themselves. It can take a little longer to get MTV as part of your classroom culture, but once it's embedded, it takes less than 5 minutes to brain storm, or reflect etc. and it's easily tidied away, or pinned up for display as we do keep returning to it in future lessons.