This week in my blog I will be talking about my third week at Smithycrofy High School. As you will be able to see in my previous blog posts my work experience here has been going very well. I am enjoying myself through my placement and gaining a lot of skills from it.

This week I done my usual lessons that I have been teaching, badminton, dance, basketball and gymnastics. I ensured that all my lessons were prepared before going into the class to teach, this always settles my nerves knowing that I have a structure to my lesson and that the pupils will be gaining from my lessons.

This week there was in incident that I hadn’t anticipated happening. During my gymnastics lesson the pupils were working on equipment, one of the boys done a cartwheel over the box top and then a forward roll. However when he done the forward roll he kneed himself in the face and knocked himself out . As the class teacher was helping another group of students he hadn’t seen it, I quickly ran to the boy while shouting on the class teach to come over as well, all of the other pupils began to panic so I quickly go them out of the room and into the changing room, I also asked for one of them to go and get some help. The boy then came around he didn’t know where he was at first or what had happened however after a couple of minutes he realised what had happened and began to feel better.

This was my first experience of an incident like this when teaching and I am pour of how I handled it as I managed to stay calm and collected through it all.  Although this was stressful it has not put me off of my work experience and I am excited to go back.

 

Unfortunately, we have come to the end of my coaching placement at Raploch Primary School. Today, I assisted a lunchtime club, basketball session and a rugby session. For this particular blog, I have chosen to talk about the basketball session.

The aim of the session was to work on dribbling with the ball as I noticed from last week’s session the children were eager to pass but were reluctant to dribble. For the warm-up, every participant had a ball however, there were four catchers. All of the participants who had a ball were encouraged to dribble around the area without getting tug by the catchers. However, if they got tug, they had to hold the ball with two hands and separate their legs. To be freed another participant had to roll their ball under their legs.

Drill one required the participants to dribble in a straight line up to the cone directly in front of them while performing a shot into the basket. Secondly, the participants had to dribble in and out of the cones until they reached the end cone, where they performed another shot. Thirdly, pressure was added upon the participants where they had to dribble into the central area, beat a passive defender and then finish with a shot. This allowed the participants to get used to the movements required in a basketball game, enabling them to gain more confidence in their ability to beat a defender.

Finally, we played a conditioned game where the participants had to try and beat one defender before they could shoot into the basket. During the game, I noticed a lot of the participants were receiving the ball and standing stationary for a long period of time. Therefore, I added a condition that when a player received the ball, they had three seconds to pass it to a teammate if they did not decide to dribble. If a player held on to the ball longer than the allocated timeframe they where penalised and the ball was handed over to the opposition. Once this condition was added I noticed a huge difference as the game flowed continuously without any stoppages.

Overall, my time at Raploch Primary School has been amazing! I have met so many great people and have built strong relationships with both the kids and my mentor. I am very fortunate to have been given this opportunity to boost my skills and knowledge within a variety of sports. Furthermore, it was a privilege to work with such an enthusiastic group of young people and adults – I cannot wait to return next year when my dissertation is complete!

On Friday we returned to the peak for another event, this time it was a Boccia Festival for children and teenagers with disabilities. I had some experience of boccia from the previous event I did with Active Stirling but on arrival Craig asked if I would be able to referee the games which straight away filled me with nerves as I wasn’t 100% on the rules of the game. However, there was a boccia coach at the event who sat us down before the games and went over the rules of the game with us which made us feel very at ease.

The games ran really smoothly and all the children seemed to be having a lot of fun. The event began with 1vs1 tournaments to which was narrowed down to semi-finals and finals and then there were team events giving the opportunity for different schools to compete. The work that Craig does in his role as an inclusion officer at Active Stirling and the Work of Sport Disability Scotland is absolutely amazing and having the opportunity to be a part of these great events has been extremely rewarding for me.

After the event I went along with Craig to Wallace High School where he oversees a programme called Sports Unite. The idea of the programme is to have the pupils of the school come into a sport session of the Additional Support Needs students and to get involved with sports with them and play with them or even just simply chill out and listen to music to encourage participation in sport. The ASN pupils have different lunch times to the other pupils so the session took part after the ASN pupils lunch which was during the other pupils lunch. Due to this I wasn’t expecting a lot of pupils to come as in past experiences I have found lunchtime clubs to not be very busy especially in high schools. The turnout from the other pupils was amazing there must have been about 30 of them in the hall, most of them were there before the ASN pupils and ate their lunch quickly in the hall so that they could join in with the sports. This experience of the Sports Unite programme was a very positive and enlightening one, it was amazing to see how many of the pupils got involved to help the other ASN pupils.

After what can we say was a disappointing work experience so far, I have been given the opportunity to work alongside the new super 6 rugby format which has been developed by the SRU. I will hope to be working alongside fellow volunteers, developing the programmes media presence and officiating during events. This is a great opportunity to work with a programme which I am very much interested in coming from a rugby background.

Hopefully, this opportunity will allow me to develop skills I can use to take on post-university.

This week I was involved in two different work experiences on Friday the 8th November. My first placement was from 9am until 1pm and it was a Boccia festival at The Peak in Stirling which was for primary and high school students who had additional support needs. My second placement was in Wallace High School which is also in Stirling and it was from 12 till 1 with pupils from the high school plus students from the support base who came together to form a multi sport lunch group to help them make new friends and have something to do.

I had forgotten to mail our seminar tutor about my placement so I was in university from 9-9.45 and I started placement at 10.00. I didn’t miss anything at all as the school pupils started to arrive around 10.00 so Craig put me in a group with Rebecca and Chloe and we were to referee Boccia and keep note of scores and organise all the children into their groups. With this particular role of refereeing I found it a little difficult as it was working with children with many kinds of disabilities and some found it hard to concentrate on the game and would walk off the court leaving their partner without a competitor. I have also been given the opportunity to do my boccia coaching which is another great qualification to put on my CV for future.

With this role I had to be very patient as some children found it hard to communicate or they were non verbal so it took them a little while to process what we were saying and progress within the game however this wasn’t a problem at all as all children learn at their own pace. We also had to think fast during this role as some children would walk off the court and not participate meaning we had to find someone to fill in their space or we would participate with them.

As the Boccia festival finished a little earlier it meant we had another opportunity to volunteer at Wallace high school. This was in their main sports hall and it was a mixture or mainstream and ASN students. This session was very laid back and I participated in many activities such as being a goalie for penalty shoot out, playing doubles in badminton, playing boccia and also playing around with volleyballs. This was an amazing experience as it was good to see both of the schools mixing together and having great fun.

When reflecting back on placement I feel I have widened my knowledge on disability sport due to working closely with the children who all had a variety of disabilities and how they all process at different paces. One thing I feel I could have changed was that I was quite easy going with some of the children when they would walk off the court, however next time I feel I should try and communicate with them more, try my best to keep them involved and see how I can support them and be able to ensure that they enjoy our sessions. I am looking forward to all my sessions I have planned next week and I will take note of areas I need to work on so that each week my sessions improve.

 

Work experience – week 6

This week I was involved in two different work experiences. Firstly, I helped out with the second of four archery classes at Fallin primary. My second work experience was a Boccia festival at the peak in Stirling.

This was my second week helping at the archery class in Fallin primary, the participants were mostly the same as the previous week, which mean they relaxed a bit in our company which was good and bad. It was good because they knew how to use the equipment and about the health a safety but it was bad because they just wanted to get straight into shooting and were more reluctant to listen this week.

My second bit of work experience was at the peak for a Boccia festival. My main job within the festival was to referee several boccia games. This was a fun role but was tricky at times. The festival was for disability children and there was a very varied range of abilities this could be hard at times because some of the games became very one sided, so to help this I just tried to be enthusiastic and compare them against their own ball rather than their opposition.

I feel like I have learnt a bit more again this week, such as helping in a group with varying levels of disability and having to deal with a slightly more disruptive class. I think from this week I’ve learnt that I may need to be stricter in situations where the children have been misbehaving because I think there were a couple of occasions that I was too lenient and It meant they thought the behaviour was ok, so I think I am still finding the balance between fun sports experience and being in charge.

I am starting to feel like my placement has become my job that I do on a Friday.  I like this as it means that I am settled and comfortable in this setting but it also makes me a little sad as I know that my placement is finishing soon.  I know that with these placements there are sometimes opportunities to carry on volunteering out with placement.  However as I am returning to my work next week after maternity Leave I will not have the capacity to continue this placement. Which is disappointing.
This weeks placement was good.  I was working one to one again with Josh.  Although he didn’t want to do any of the activities in class this week, he left his dad with relatively no dramas and even spoke to  two of the other coaches.  He has never done this before and when they have tried to talk to him he has shied away from them.  This week HE actively spoke to them.  So it appears that he is becoming more comfortable in the class environment.
The home school group and the school group were fun to work with.  I feel that I am able to relate well to the children and have built good relationships with them.  I am able to be instructive but also fun which they like as the seem to be able to connect to me and listen to what I ask.
last session of the day was Dodgeball.  This session Tony always leads and I am thankful as there are some particularly strong characters in this group.  A few of them really struggle with instruction and being told something that they don’t want to hear or agree with.  A lot of the time Tony has to explain the role of the umpire and the consequences of not listening to them and arguing back.  It is a shame that this happens quite regularly as it wastes a lot of time.  However when they do listen and work as a team there are some fantastic players!
I look forward to next weeks sessions.

Christina

James

Finally! I started my placement this week. I

went in to my old school 9-12 on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday thus meaning I have competed 9 hours. I am happy to finally have started after so much delay. It is also a relief that each day has varied from the other meaning I will have a good amount of topics to cover in my presentation which if you read my previous posts is something I was worried about.

I’ll save most of the content of my placement but this is a brief over line of what the 3 days consisted of:

Monday 04/11:

Period 1 – swimming 1st years going through relay races using diff strokes

Period 2 – Swimming 2nd years practicing diving

Period 3 – dodgeball with 4th years

Wednesday 06/11

Period 1 – warm up hoop game working on team work/communication & basketball with 4 year national 5s

Period 2 – classroom how social factors impact performance with same 4Y N5s

Period 3 – Sport Ed class doing netball

Thursday 7/11

Period 1 – PE studies S3 Football

Period 2- Higher class Badminton working on training approaches combination drills then games

Period 3 – Rugby with S3

I noticed a lot of positive changes in the school compared to my time there. I will go into more details about these also.

I look forward to the coming weeks and will keep yous updated on my progress.

This week I was quite busy with placement to try and make up a few hours since I am later at starting. On Wednesday I attended Raploch Community Campus for a lunchtime multi sports session and I also attended an after school archery session at Fallin primary school.

Before attending placement I was slightly nervous which to me is normal as I always get nervous before starting new things. But I was soon put to ease when I attended my first session. Craig met me at the campus and he explained to me that the campus has 3 separate primary schools within it. Also that there would be children from mainstream school attending and also children from the ASN school. This session was basketball and consisted of familiarisation with the ball, dribbling, passing and shooting exercises. The children were all very keen to attend this session. I found that when children were taking part in the drills it was important to give them encouragement as it kept them trying hard. I also had to slightly adapt a drill as there was a girl with a walking frame who wasn’t able to dribble the ball round the cones. So I then suggested that she missed out the dribbling and tried to take a shot and she was more than happy to do this. Another thing I found which was pleasing was how encouraging and inclusive the children from mainstream school are towards the children from the ASN school. I thoroughly enjoyed this session and look forward to the next few weeks.

Also on Wednesday I attended Fallin primary school for an archery club with primary 6/7. This club started last week but I was unable to attend due to having the dentist. I didn’t really know what to expect at first as archery isn’t something I have ever taken part in. When I first arrived the children were very loud and were misbehaving. But I feel like this was due to excitement. They were very eager to get started and one of the girls showed me how to hold the bow and how to put my arrow in as I had missed last weeks session. The children really enjoyed taking part and I even got the chance to have a shot-i managed to hit an 8! I look forward to attending this session next week.

Then on Friday I attended a Boccia Festival. I attended this session with some of my class mates. We helped fill out some scoresheets to start with and then got paired up to be referees on the courts. We then took it in turns to referee and fill in the score card. I enjoyed this as I’ve never really had the chance to referee before. The children all tried really hard and enjoyed this event. Ive also been asked to attend a Monday night Boccia session and get my level 1 Boccia coaching.

-Chloe