G4 Touch Rugby: Visible Thinking Routine

A visible thinking routine inquiring into the concept of 'support' in touch rugby

As you can read in previous blogs, introducing touch rugby in the Elementary school, when they have never played anything like it before, has at times been a little challenging.

This year, armed with visible thinking routines I really wanted the students to think about the concept of "support" in touch rugby. The idea that you have to be behind the ball carrier if want to receive the ball and get in on the play.

The concept of getting behind and/or looking for/to pass the ball backwards is always a little mind blowing when all you've played before are games where a forward pass towards a goal is the preferred option!

During the 1st-3rd lessons I wanted to get a glimpse of my students prior knowledge and if they were having any takeaways from the 'tuning in' part of the unit...

I divided the page into three sections:

Support:

• What is it?
• Further questions
• What did it look like in today's lesson? 

Presenting at APPEC 2015

Collection of media images and photos from my time presenting at the APPEC 2015 conference in Hong Kong.

The lesson this presentation was based upon can be found here

Grade 3 & 4 Touch Rugby

A summery of two years of hard work, introducing touch rugby into Elementary School.

Last year I made a decision to put touch rugby on the elementary curriculum for grades 3 and 4. The school plays rugby in middle school (MS) and in high school (HS). I coach the boys JV rugby team (contact) in HS and the boys MS touch team.

Last year in G3 I possibly set my sights too high, and introduced the full game from scratch. This proved to be really hard work. The concept that you need to give constant support from behind the ball carrier, blew a lot of students minds... The G4s grasped it a bit better, but it still wasn't plain sailing.

Reflecting on the units, I made some changes this year.

Rather than dropping the G3's straight into the full game, we focused on ball handling skills. There are loads of games to be played which really develop their ball handling/carrying skills.

A couple of favorites included:

Snakes: Split into groups of 4. The snake moves around the court/field, the front player scores a try by placing the ball on the ground, the second player picks up and leads the snake for about 5-10 paces before scoring another try (I encourage placing the ball firmly on the floor, so it doesn't roll away. and bending the knees to pick up the ball with both hands). After scoring a try the players must join another snake, with the idea of keeping all the snakes equal sizes.

Pass & Run: In pairs, pass to each other while moving around the court/field. The player that places the ball on the ground first, runs! the partner rushes to pick up the ball to give chase, their objective is to tag the runner with the ball.

Rugby Tag: The taggers carry a rugby ball each (both hands). Their objective is to tag as many runners with the ball that they can. Once tagged the runners collect a ball themselves and join the taggers. The winners are the last runners left.

Finally, the game the students all love is...
British bulldog/Shrimps and Minnows: This game is great for getting the students in the middle (taggers/tacklers) thinking defensively, making that line across the court in order to stop the runners breaking through. In preparation for touch rugby, I always insist the defense (students in the middle) to be back 5 paces, to walk backwards (face the runners), and to create an almost impenetrable defensive wall. Once they have those concepts, having them work as a team, slowly pushing forwards to squeeze the runners space is great development for the future games. The runners on the other hand work on their skills of avoiding being tagged: changing speed, changing direction etc.

With the G3's this year we never got to play a full game, but we did play lots and lots of fun and fast games that developed their hand-eye coordination, their concept of team and their communication skills.

For the Grade 4's I start with a couple of the ball handling games, and of course British bulldog, but by the 2nd or 3rd lesson we are looking at the concept of support and we are out on the field playing touch rugby.

We start the lesson with a brief handling drill, but the majority of the time is spent playing.

This year, touch rugby has really taken off! The students are playing hard and learning fast!

Below are collages from my three G4 classes this year.

 

Grade 3 Inquiry into the importance of Teamwork through the Learning Lens of Rugby Skills

In this unit we are particularly focusing on their ball handling skills and movement concepts, with the underlying theme of the role of support for the ball carrier and how to evade a tackler.

• What is the most efficient way to carry and pass a rugby ball?
• How do we know when are partner/team mate is ready to receive the ball?
• What does support look like in rugby and how is it different compared to other invasion games you know?
• How do you evade a tackler/tagger?

Grade 5 Inquiring into Coaching & Feedback through the learning lens of Volleyball

The tuning in part of the unit was to (re)introduce the class to three basic skills (overhead pass, forearm pass and the underarm serve) and get them helping one another develop these skills. The start of the unit particularly focused on feeding oneself the ball or feeding a partner. 

Each class then took on the task to take one of the skills and to break it down into coachable stages (I suggested maximum 5 - 7 points). 

I introduced the key stages of preparation, execution, and follow-through to help the groups develop their checklists. 

Through discussion, problem-solving, trial and error and modelling the students soon came up with a sequential checklist. Once they felt they had their draft 5-7 points they worked closely with another group to compare notes in order to create a more definitive checklist that everyone agree upon. 

Grade 5B Creating a Checklist for the Forearm Pass

Using their groups Checklist to give Feedback and Coach one another on the Forearm Pass 

Grade 5C Creating a Checklist for the Overhead Pass

Using their groups Checklist to give Feedback and Coach one another on the Overhead Pass 

Grade 5E Creating a Checklist for the Overhead Pass

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 4

Feedback & more Rejigging

Now to add the feedback from the department... As you can see the descriptions have been adjusted... This is still not the finished product (it will probably never be finished as every year it will be reimagined) but we now have a product both schools have agreed upon.

Previous Links:
Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 1
Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 2
Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 3
A Proposed Draft Conceptual Map for Physical Education

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 3

Reflecting, Rejigging and We finally have a format we can start working with...

So a change of format, the adding of a must do learning journey (school wide) for the year. Realising that the PE learning journey of Relationships is also a possible year long commitment to do justice to the concepts within... and we have a start to the Physical Education Conceptual Matrix:

Physical Education Conceptual Matrix

Links:
Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 1
Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 2
A Proposed Draft Conceptual Map for Physical Education

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 2

Reflections on the Learning Journeys

Sitting back, reflecting and talking to colleges I realised that some of the "learning journeys" are perhaps longer than just one or two units a year...

But how do we make all of them explicit and still do them justice?

This is the dilemma...

More ideas... 

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 1

Developing a Conceptual Matrix in Physical Education Pt. 1

This is an area of planning and physical education I feel passionately about. Last year I created "A Proposed Draft Conceptual Map for Physical Education" to help explain some of the thoughts I was developing around making concepts explicit in PE.

This year both our Elementary schools are going to attempt to draw up a conceptual matrix to use in physical education, from Early Year 1 through to Grade 5.

The goal is to get both Elementary Schools on the same page, having the teachers teach big picture concepts explicitly (that have real world application) along side the schools adopted PE curriculum, while teaching through an inquiry lens.

Sounds easy don't it?

Creating Learning Journeys for Physical Education

What 'learning journeys' are there in Elementary PE? Meaning, what subheadings can everything we do in physical education be grouped under?

I initially went with dividing the sports/games into the more traditional areas of: Invasion games, Net/Wall games, Striking & Fielding, Fitness, Individual Pursuit, Swimming and Dance/Gymnastics.

The problems with this is there are too many learning journeys, we are really looking for 4 or 5 tops, without being too ridged e.g. an invasion game is an invasion game and there is no wriggle room. Plus it's too old fashioned, not conceptual enough, not big picture enough.

I looked at the work I did last year with my Conceptual Map for PE. I had divided everything I did into 4 main areas: Relationships, Ethics, Coaching & Feedback and Health, Fitness and Social.

As a reference this time I used Guy Claxton's Building Learning Power and started to reexamine my conceptual map. 

On the image above the blue pen is possible learning journeys, the green pen are major concepts that fall under each of the learning journeys and in red is Guy Claxton's Building Learning Power concepts. 

As you can see from the image above I changed/adapted some of my original headings. Having worked with my conceptual map all of last year I had a good idea of what worked and what needed to be improved.

My headings now read: Relationships, Ethics, Health & Fitness, Coaching & Feedback and Elements of Movement or Movement Concepts (still haven't decided which one I like yet). Could these work as Physical Education Learning Journeys? 

Using headings like relationships rather than invasion games gives the teacher ore options to choose what sport/game does justice to a particular concept e.g. a lot more wriggle room.

At this stage we now have the Learning Journeys, though these may change...

But having the Learning Journeys lets us draw up the start of the matrix: 

The Physical Education Learning Journeys
Conceptual Matrix (Blank)

All we have to do now is fill it in :)

To be continued...

G5 Volleyball Introduction #proudteacher

I introduced Nukem/Volleyball at Grades 3 and 5 into the PIE Physical Education curriculum three years ago. This year I have some of the original G3's who participated in that very first unit. So far we've only revisited the overhead pass (for one lesson) but I must admit it makes me feel proud seeing how much they retained, understood and learnt from that first Volleyball unit in Grade 3 #proudteacher

Practicing the Overhead Pass playing "Overhead Pass Basketball"