On Tuesday, we were required to carry out a 10 minute reflection presentation about our current placement. Due to PVG complications, I had only actually carried out 12 hours of my placement, so a lot of my presentation was about things to consider for the future.

With this being said, I was of course able to talk about my previous hours and some stand out experiences from them. Through these, I was also able to demonstrate what I had personally gained, learned and improved on in terms of skills and various coaching styles. It is surprising how much you can learn in such a short space of time!

At the beginning of my presentation, I felt the nerves begin to settle in which made me worry about the speed I was going talking at. However, the breathing exercises we had been taught about in our previous seminar really helped to combat this as I felt as though I kept a steady pace throughout. It was also difficult to try and avoid reading straight from my cards but hopefully I engaged enough with my peers in order to keep them in some what interested in what I had to say!

I wanted to hand out an example lesson plan so that my peers understood that I was mostly carrying out shadow work as I was still in the early stages of my placement. My mentor was happy to provide me with one to use and print off for everyone to have a look at.

My second hand out was some information about the Exercise Referral team and what they do. I wanted to use this as well as it ties in with what I want to do next year, so I wanted to provide a better understanding about the exercise stages they give to certain people and the classes that they offer as I was unable to talk extensively about it within my 10 minutes.

Overall, I think that the presentation went well and I really enjoyed talking about everything that I had learned so far and all my prospects for the future!

Bright and early start again! This week I am going to talk about the rugby session with the primary 3 class.

The warm up was a classic couple of rounds of toilet tig to get the kids on the move before recapping on what we learned the previous week. The kids were then split up into 3 teams of 5 and 1 team of 4 for relay races. This gave the kids a chance to practice running and holding the ball and scoring a try whilst encouraging team work, competitiveness and motivation. As the numbers were odd, I decided to take part with the team with the fewer participants. Like last week, this allowed  me to really connect and build on my relationship with the class that is only growing every week.

The session then progressed into a mini possession type game. This consisted of the class being split into two groups with myself and Lauren taking one half of them. The game resembled a bigger, more inclusive version of ‘piggy in the middle’. The kids had to work together and pass quickly to their team mates without the ball being intercepted by the two and sometimes three kids in the middle. This really helped the kids work on their special awareness, speed and decision making whilst keeping a large fun element to it.

Great session again – the kids really seem to be enjoying every challenge we put in front of them!

Finally! My first week at Raploch Primary and I was up bright and early for my 6 hour day with a 9 o’clock start. In total, I helped out in 4 PE sessions that consisted of badminton, rounders, basketball, and rugby and a football session at a lunchtime club. Every single class was a learning experience that managed to challenge me in various different ways.

One session in particular that stood out today was the basketball session with the primary 6 class. Lauren and myself teamed up this week from lunchtime onwards and both agreed that this session was especially good. As this was both Lauren and I’s first time with this group, we decided to allow the kids to play games in a mini tournament made up of six teams. This was so that we could get a good idea of the standard before planning drills for future weeks. The primary 6 teacher that we were working with, had told us that in previous weeks the class had been working on teamwork and cooperation. With this information, I suggested to her that we put certain adaptations into each of the three games in order to keep her teamwork theme going.

In the first game, the kids were free to play with no adaptations. However, for the second and third games, we put rules in place that the kids had to make two passes before shooting and then progressing on to everyone in the team touching the ball before taking a shot. I thought that we would notice even a slight difference in the teamwork level between the first and last match, but we were pleasantly proven wrong as all of the children were trying to involve everyone throughout the full session.

I also decided to take part in all three matches, either because one team was a player short or just playing with the team that had possession. Personally, I found this very rewarding as this was my first session with this class and of my placement. So it was a great way to get involved with the kids and create relationships early on with this aspect of coaching but in a more playful manner. I was also given really positive feedback from both the teacher and the kids after this session when I asked if they enjoyed it.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable day meeting everyone and I am excited for the weeks ahead!

I was able to meet up with my mentor this week to discuss starting my placement next week. Originally I was suppose to be doing a couple of hours on a Tuesday at a badminton class but this has now changed to a 6/7 hour day coaching at Raploch. We decided that this would be more beneficial as time is now getting on and I had become anxious about getting all my hours done in time. However, Natalie has reassured me that with these Thursday hours combined with 3 or 4 of the Exercise Referral classes, I would be able to reach the required 30 hours easily – which put me at ease.

I have been told that shadowing and coaching PE classes, lunchtime sessions and after school clubs offer a range of sports and activities for the kids on a weekly basis. This made me really excited as I get to explore a lot of different drills throughout each sport at different performance levels and ages. There also may be a chance to explore different coaching styles as Natalie has told me about shadowing her at a lunchtime club that helps kids actually just learn how to interact with each other and play – which requires a more relaxed and friendly way of coaching as opposed to the structure of dills that I am used to.

Overall, I am just really excited and eager to get going on Thursday and get some coaching underway!

Due to unfortunate illness, it has been very difficult for me to make the travel to Stirling from Glasgow in order to meet with my mentor more than once. However, things are looking up for this coming week as a meeting has been set up for this Tuesday to finally sort out my PVG and the rest of the paperwork. I have also been notified that if everything goes to plan, I should be starting a full day placement in a school beginning Thursday the 7th.

I have also been told that shadowing the Exercise Referral group at the Peak should hopefully be good to go within the next few weeks which I am especially excited about. Not only will it help boost my hours that are required, it will also give me my well-needed experience for next year.

It has been a very long and tiring process and the timing of my illness has definitely not helped either. It’s looking like there are many other opportunities such as events coming up that my mentor is also keen to get me involved in. However, I’m hoping that I can get started next week as planned in the school and as soon as possible with the referrals.

Over the past few weeks, my supervisor and I have been communicating back and forth through email to help finalise a placement in Stirling for this year. We have had a single one to one meeting in Stirling where we discussed upcoming opportunities at specific sport coaching sessions and events. I requested to volunteer at sport coaching sessions mainly because I already have an HNC and an HND in sport coaching and I knew that this would be well within my comfort zone.  As I also live in Glasgow, we further decided that it would be beneficial to keep a lot of my volunteer hours within one day a week to help save on petrol and travel time.

Furthermore, we talked about the career path I would likely be taking in around a years time. I discussed the fact that I wanted to potentially go back to university and study Physiotherapy, preferably in England around the Manchester area. Revealing this to my supervisor actually helped with another potential volunteer opportunity arising out with the sport coaching environment. I may be allowed to shadow a health advisor at the Peak, who gives advice to people that have been referred from the NHS about things like movement after injury and nutrition plans. As this would help me gain much needed experience in this field for next year, I was extremely keen on this potential extra opportunity.

Our next meeting will hopefully sort out my PVG checks before finalising my hours.

Amy