Employability

Mentoring – Level 4 Festivals:

In my 2nd year at Leeds Beckett we took part in a mentoring task for the level 4’s, this was an opportunity to give feedback to them based off a session plan which they had created for primary schools. As we had completed this in our first year of University I had ideas of what the marking criteria was looking for in their coaching behaviours and layout of the session. For our first festival with the level 4’s they had to coach a multi skills session based on object control, this was due to the age and stage of the participants, with them being 5-7 year old’s they don’t have specific sport skills, according to the Youth Physical Development model (Lloyd & Oliver 2012) and the Long Term Athlete Development model (Balyi 2005), showing that this age and stage of participants are in their sampling years.

The layout of the session which they led, was very vague compared to their session plan in action their was a lot of stationery moments and from our own experience at placement participants at a younger age get very bored easily. Whilst monitoring the level 4’s we were given a sheet in which we had to mark down the coaches behaviours, pedagogical techniques (is the coaching having an impact on the participants? Are they engaged?) whilst also making sure they were sticking to their session plan. When watching the session we based the performance of the session by using the planning and reflective framework model (Muir et al 2011) which breaks down 4 key elements of what a coach needs to incorporate into their sessions. After the session we would take the coaches to one side and discuss what we enjoyed about the session, the strengths of what they did, as well as giving them weaknesses and what we thought as level 5 coaches, needed improving in terms of objectives, performance or presentation.

References:

• Lloyd, R & Oliver, J (2012) Youth Physical Development Model
• Balyi, I (2005) Contemporary Model of LTAD
• Muir et al, (2011) The Coaching Planning and Reflective Framework

COIL with DUT:

Part way through my 2nd year at Leeds Beckett, we took part in a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) with the students at Durban University of Technology, SA. To start off with we gathered information about Durham University and some statistics in which we could discuss when we got to Skype call them over the computer. As coaching is a globalised job, we were asked to share some of our experiences from placement and general coaching to the students of DUT, as well as this the students in DUT could share some information on coaching in a different country and what their coaching behaviours consist of to coach a class and keep them engaged. After this session we went away and tried to find a perfect session plan from our placement to show the students the kind of coaching and layout we have for different age and stage of development. The reasoning for this was because similar with the level 4’s at Beckett, DUT had a festival which for some students was their first time coaching and due to our experiences so far, it meant that we could give them some feedback on their session and help devise strategies to how they could improve their session. When doing this we decided to use Baume (2009) theory of active, attractive and appropriate, this was because we could use this layout to see if the session was relevant to the age and stage of the participants and relevant to the skills in which they were coaching. We finally got in contact with the students and discussed their session plan which was a Fundamental Movement Session plan based on object control, from this we then went onto discussing the main objectives of the session and what sort of drills they had incorporated into the session. From this I learnt that different types of coaches focus on different areas of the session plan, for example at Beckett we focus on meeting the session objectives, where I noticed for the students at DUT they mainly focus on the layout of the session and how they are going to present it to their group of participants and from this we actually had to make sure that their learning objectives had some relevancy to the session and that they would incorporate this into their festival.

References:

Baume, D (2009) Writing and using good learning outcomes

Multi Skills – Youth Sport Trust (YST)

For the multi skills session which we took part in, the coach taught us all about the way that we can change a game or activity to fit the needs of participants who may be at a disadvantage to the rest of the class. The reasoning for this session was to show us as coaches that we can adapt certain scenarios to fit peoples needs, at the start of the session we were given a various amount of different equipment, within this equipment we had to juggle the objects. The equipment ranged from pieces of fabric, tennis balls, footballs and balloons, plus many more, the idea was to see if we could adapt the equipment to make it easier for us to juggle them. This gave us an idea on either how easy or hard this can be for participants who struggle with a certain type of disability and how we can with equipment, change the level of difficulty by allowing them to chose their own equipment to help them progress. From this we found a lot of participants found it easier to juggle with the choice of their own equipment, this allowed them to experience mastery and being effective. (Ryan & Deci (2000) Throughout the session the main objective of it was to break down the STEP Model (Black 2011)(Space, Task, Equipment and People) theses are the 4 key components which as a coach you can adapt to fit the need of every participant. From this we then moved onto the last part of the session which was choosing a sport with a participant who had a particular disability and how we could adapt this into a session which makes it inclusive, the sport in which we had was dance and was for a young girl who had learning difficulties. When looking through all the potential activities we could perform, we decided to create a session where every movement was like an analogy, this was due to the fact that young participants like the idea of having to use their imagination as it makes sessions more fun and especially for participants who have a disability it will make it inclusive in the way that everyone can imagine they are all these different shapes and animals, whilst incorporating them into dance moves.

References:

• Black, K & Stevenson, P (2011) ‘The inclusion spectrum’ sports development
• Ryan & Deci (2000) Self Determination Theory (SDT)