Surprisingly, this is now week 4 of my placement at Raploch Primary school! Where has the time went? Today, I was invited along to take part in three physical education classes which included the following sports/physical activity; badminton, fitness, and football. For this specific blog, I have chosen to speak about the badminton session. This session was geared towards a primary 3/4 class. For the warm-up, we played toilet tig which was chosen by the participants.

After the warm-up, we played the traffic light game which worked on racket handling and movement. All the participants were required to have a shuttlecock and racket when taking part in this drill. The teacher shouted instructions that the children had to carefully listen to and follow. For example, if the teacher shouted the color green, the participants were encouraged to run while balancing the shuttlecock on their racket, if she shouted amber the participates were expected to walk while balancing the shuttlecock on the racket followed by red which meant the participants had to stop.

For the second drill, the participants had to try and keep the shuttlecock off of the ground by taking “small touches”. During this drill, I stepped in and made numerous coaching points to help a group of girls that I noticed were struggling. I encouraged the girls to aim for the centre of the badminton racket when trying to hit the shuttlecock as they were hitting the sides. After given the coaching points I stepped back and let the girls try it themselves. Most of the girls were screaming “I CAN DO IT!!”. This put a huge cheesy smile on my face as not only was I improving the children’s technique, I was also making them feel positive about themselves!

Finally, we went into a rally where the participants were asked to pick a partner and hit the shuttle back and forward to one another. A few of the children ran up to me and asked can I be your partner? This again made me feel valued. Overall, I would say this has been one of the best sessions that I have assisted during my time at Raploch Primary School. The children listened, showed excitement and most importantly, enjoyed the session! – Lauren

This week I finally got to begin my volunteering. I arrived at The Peak for 8:45 AM and was met by Craig who took me in to the hall where the event was taking place. I then helped some of the staff with equipment and brought this into the hall. To begin with I felt a little nervous as I’d never really helped at such an event before. But once I got started I felt at ease.

I was put in a group with an Active Schools Coordinator from Falkirk. In my group there was 9 children. This group started off at Boccia. This was a new sport for me to learn and was good to see it being played. I picked up quickly on this and then I got the offer of refereeing a game. This involved me having a red and blue cone and when it was blues turn I held up the blue cone so that the children knew when to go. I had fun doing this but at times I found it difficult to decide which ball was closer to the white ball.

The next activity my group moved onto was badminton. The children were split into two groups. One group played games of badminton while the other group played target practice. There were a series of hula hoops set out and the children had to try and get balls and shuttlecocks in the hoop. A couple of the older boys got bored of the target practice after a while so I then gave them a challenge and told them what hoop to aim for.

After this my group then moved onto swimming. Whilst the group were taking part I just observed as there wasn’t much I could do. The children were in the water with Active Stirling staff and swimming teachers.

The next activities were football and athletics. The football started off as drills and then moved onto a game. Then when the children moved onto athletics they worked on three different aspects: running, throwing and jumping. The first activity was hurdles which involved them running and jumping over obstacles. Then the throwing involved throwing a ball, throwing a bean bag and then moved onto throwing a javelin. Some of the children could throw the javelin really far even managing to hit the back wall. Then the final session was jumping so the children jumped on a mat and got to measure how far they could jump.

Then after lunch the activities were climbing and curling. The children got the chance to climb up and down the climbing wall. Some were slightly nervous about doing this but they all gave it a good shot. This was cut short as the children were running out of time. They then got a short time curling. This involved them having the chance to use a stick to try push the curling stones to see how far they could get it.

I enjoyed being able to watch different activities and learn some new things. In the next event or session I would like to get more involved.

Apologies for the late post,

I have had a very busy week combining university coursework, part-time work, and work relating to the fun run. Since the meeting last week I have been in contact with the rugby team in support of the fun run. There is hopefully going to be a large input from the squad which will increase the numbers at the event. As well as Rugby, I have been in contact with members of the athletics club who have shown an interest in taking part in the run.

As a team, we are trying to encourage more and more students to sign up for the race and push this as a student event as much as possible.

The next stage is setting up our stall at the INTO building promoting the race for our exchange students. I have a meeting with Graeme tomorrow where we will discuss the progress made since our initial meeting.

 

 

I was looking forward to working on my paper in mid-semester reading week as I wouldn’t have many meetings. However, my computer refused to work this morning.

I had to come to the library to work. It is not very convenient to work without my computer and two monitors. On the other hand, it is good to work at the library as this environment makes me feel like I am a student.

I have realised that my computer must be very stressed and so was I due to the excessive work last week. This might be a kind reminder that I should slow down and look after myself and my computer.

Romie

Week 3 – work experience

Not dissimilar to the previous two weeks I have been waiting for news of my PVG to go through and am yet to do any practical work experience so again feel like I’ve done a lot of waiting but there has been a bit of light at the end of the tunnel this week.

In my last blog post I wrote about how I had emailed my adviser Craig in order to put my name down for a volunteering opportunity but had done so later on a Friday so hadn’t heard back from him yet. In my comments Romie had advised that if I didn’t hear back from him on Monday is should send a reminder, which is what I ended up doing and he got back to me quickly afterwards. So, I now have my place as an event assistant at the central parasport festival on the 23rd which I am excited about because although I have a bit of experience working in a sports environment I have never been involved in a festival sized event before so am interested in seeing a little bit of what goes on in the background, what it takes to run an event like this one and at this stage I don’t really know what my role will entail but look forward to finding out.

Hopefully by next week I will have my PVG through and will have a little bit more to write about having helped at the parasport festival.

Thanks for reading.

My mentor Craig emailed last week with a few event options for us that Active Stirling are running.  The first event is the Central Parasport Event taking place at the Peak on the 23rd of October (this Wednesday) which is being organised by Scottish Disability Sport as well as Active Stirling. The second event that was offered to me is the Stirling Boccia Festival also taking place at the Peak on the 8th of November and also being organised by Scottish Disability Sport and Active Stirling. The role at both of these events would be an ‘Event Assistant’.

Unfortunately, I am unable to make the Stirling Boccia Festival due to uni commitments but I replied to Craig letting him know that I would be very keen on attending the Central Parasport Event. I think this event will be a great start to my work placement with Active Stirling as it seems like a really fun event which will be busy giving me the opportunity to work with and meet new people. I am thankful that these opportunities have also been given to my classmates that are on placement with Active Stirling as it means I am able to communicate and share my thoughts and feelings with them, it is encouraging to know they are experiencing the same feelings as me. I think working as an Event Assistant will be really fun and I am definitely going to put my all into the role and be as helpful to Craig and the other organisers/staff as I can be.

I am weary however as I am still awaiting confirmation that my upgraded PVG has returned. If it is not returned by Wednesday I will be unable to volunteer at the event which would be a great shame as it seems like a really great opportunity which I would love to do. I am going to get in contact with Craig to double check this and hopefully it will work out.

James Hunter

Not much has changed since my last post as I have not received a reply to the email I sent to my mentor. Thus I began to believe that she may have given me the wrong email as I would have expected a reply by now.

This has made me feel stressed as my placement has already been delayed enough due to the reasons mentioned in my previous blog post such as my own lack of urgency. Therefore I tried to make another attempt to speed up the process as I am now more motivated than ever to ensure I gain as many positives as I can from this experience.

A few days ago I was working in my airport job 6am-10am so I decided that I would go to my former school once my shift was finished. I drove there only to find the school closed with the shutters down leading me to the realisation that it was “October week” and the school was closed for both staff and pupils. This was frustrating as I was looking forward to speaking to my mentor in person in order to sort out the details of my placement arrangement. However on the other hand it also gave me clarity as to why my email has not been answered yet as obviously my mentor will not be looking at her school email during her week off.

Despite another setback in sorting my placement I plan to go to my school on Monday if I do not receive a reply to my email in the morning. While this may not give my mentor much of an opportunity to actually see the email I want to minimise any further postponement of starting my placement.

My third day of work experience brought even more opportunities that I had not experienced before. Myself and my mentor Fraser visited four Primary Schools within the Smithycroft learning community in the East End of Glasgow. I found this very useful and a chance to network and build more contacts.

Firstly, we discussed the clubs that would be running in the schools after the October Week which prompted the recording of the type of equipment and amount needed for each school. This allowed me to work on my inventory skills as well as my organisational skills. We dropped off the new equipment at the school whilst also tidying and organising the sports equipment cupboards. This was a great opportunity for me as I was able to meet some of the staff in each of the schools and continue to build working relationships with them. Although it was the October week, the staff were still in the school, which made me realise how much work and commitment they put into ensuring all aspects of the educational establishment is organised and ready for pupils returning.

Fraser informed me about how each school has their own budget for the year and how it must be used efficiently. I learned that because the schools are in the east end of Glasgow – an area of high socio-economic deprivation – that funding for sports related activities is fundamental but limited. This made me realise as a young person who grew up in a disadvantaged area, that more opportunities need to continue to be offered to these young people to get them as active as possible.

My third day of work experience taught me more about the roles of an Active Schools Coordinator. It made me realise that Sports Development is more than just organising clubs for young people to attend and that there is also logistical and administrative work the coordinators undertake that people aren’t aware of.

-Stephanie

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