After a number of weeks of waiting for PVGs to be approved, this past week I finally started my work placement with Active Stirling. Even though it was only one hour completed, I was extremely relieved to just have got the ball rolling towards my 30 hours of work. For my first experience of my placement, myself and my mentor Craig arranged to meet at Riverside Primary School where we were to deliver a new lunchtime football club for Primary 2 pupils.
I arrived at the school at the start of their lunchtime, feeling slightly nervous. However, Craig is great at making me feel at ease and straight away he showed me around the facilities at the school and we gathered some soft footballs from the equipment cupboard, appropriate for the P2 children. Before the kids arrived, Craig assured me that the session would be very relaxed, with the main aim being to get the children active and giving them a taste of football.
As the children slowly started to arrive after eating their lunch, I firstly organised them into a game of tig as a warm up. Although Craig was leading the first session, I felt comfortable setting the children up in this game, the relaxed atmosphere definitely helped me in this regard. After they had warmed up, we did a couple of relay races with the children, with the importance placed upon functional movement skills during the children’s developmental years. Overall, the kids seemed to respond well to me which definitely helped my confidence, and made me look forward to going back again.
Taking part in the Presentation Skills seminar on Thursday was also a valuable part of this module. I am never very confident in presenting to my peers, and we will have to wait and see if I do better than previously in this module’s presentation, but I definitely felt the session was helpful and delivered in an engaging fashion.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be continuing with the P2 football club at Riverside Primary, as well as helping at the P6 football club on Mondays after school, which I am looking forward to. I will also be assisting at the Central Badminton Championships taking place next week at the PEAK, a different experience which should be equally as enjoyable.
It sounds really cool that you get to experience lots of different aspects from your placement!
Glad to see you’re enjoying your placement, hope it goes well.