For my placement I am currently coaching at St Bartholomew’s C of E Primary School, who are based in Armley, of Leeds. This school is a very large church school, which bases its ethos and vision on Christian values. Within my placement every Thursday I go into the school and coach sports which are provided to me by the curriculum. I have 3 classes of 36 participants from the ages of 7-9 (year 4), their age and stage of development at this point will be peer relationships and egocentric as well as SOL based activities. According Piaget and Vygotsky, who said that children between the ages of 3 -5 experience ego centrism which is where a child is very much independent and has an inability to understand another persons point of view, meaning in sports such as rugby they will very much want to keep the ball to themselves or with their close peers who they trust.
Within the placement we are given a specific curriculum in which we have to follow, for this the school give us two sports in which we have an option of coaching. The participants at this school tend to have PE once a week at school, majority of the sessions being 40 minutes long. The sessions tend to be led in either the sports hall/assembly hall or on the school play grounds, usually depending on the weather conditions the practicals will be taken outside to allow the participants enough space to perform in.
Drawing on my knowledge and experience in which I have gained from coaching at this school, I have found that praise and positive modelling have been a key behaviour in which we have discovered that the participants thrive off and motivates the children to work even harder during our drills. Fortunately I have been kept with same 3 groups of participants which enables me to be more confident when coaching and also helps me when writing session plans as I am capable of differentiating skills and game play based on the ability of the students. Baring that in mind it has given me a good coach and participant relationship with the students and from this mutual respect is been given in sessions, built from the very beginning of the placement.
As we are restrained from delivering specific areas of skills in sessions, the coaching behaviours been provided from Leeds Beckett and past experiences coaching in the sports, the teachers of the class are very open for ideas and suggestions, which allows me to write my sessions plan up at my own discretion, helping me to constrain and change to the level of ability in each class. However due to this as not all participants in my sessions will have wide based skill level when setting objectives for each session, it allows me to individualise areas of play for individual and team play. From writing my own session plan I have to take into consideration the amount of constraints which I can put in place, due to the study of Newells Constraints, as coaches we have to be aware of a participants cognitive development and what we can do in sessions that allows them to do this, in the study it talks about two types of constraints, in which we have to be aware of when coaching to allow all players to have an opportunity to develop. Them being structural and functional. Structural focuses on the structure of the participants body mass and weight, as our participants are age 7-9 there will be different heights and levels of body mass, meaning equipment may have to be adapted to the practice. Functional is the level of motivation; is the session in which we are leading going to help the participants develop as well as keep them engaged. Linking into this he also goes into the environmental and task constraints, to which we have to look into whether or not a specific practice is safe and if the environment which we perform in is going to be safe and relevant for the session designed.
From working at St Bartholomew’s and seeing the development of the participants in my class it has given me a meso goal for my students at the end of the placement, due to our placement being cut short. Incorporating micro goals to be completed by the ended of each session. The main aim of it all is to keep referring to past knowledge and skills used and keep refreshing the students knowledge so that throughout the year, it ingrains knowledge and understanding of the core components of the sessions in which we will be achieved at the end of the whole placement.
My Roles and Responsibilties:
- Planning and differentiating session plans for physical, mental, biopyscosocial and technical/tactical development.
- Creating a positive environment between coach and students, whilst encouraging participation and development.
- Using specific coaching behaviours to implement approaches to inclusion of all participants whilst coaching.
- Dealing with participants with specific illnesses and disabilities, also participants who have no motivation to join in with the rest of the group.
References:
- Piaget, J (1936) Cognitive Development Theory
- Vygotsky, L (1978) Development of Cognition
- Haywood & Getchell (2009) Newells Model of Constraints
- Newell, K. M. (1986). Constraints on the Development of Coordination.
Lauren Hall's Coaching Placement Blog 