Recently, I was involved with tennis, soccer and volleyball practice sessions, and I was reading some books on skills and drills. Luckily I found a Game approach to teaching game technical and tactical skills. I wanted to discuss this approach here.
Tennis NZ have a games based programme called Grasshoppers
[i]The Grasshoppers programme is the Tennis NZ national initiative to introduce tennis to 5-10 year olds in schools throughout the country.
The Grasshoppers programme is a games based programme that focuses on fundamental skills and provides a seamless integration in to the PE curriculum and directly links with children joining a national programme for tennis clubs.
The programme has taken elements of best practice from existing tennis in schools programmes and built on this to encompass exciting developments for children, teachers, coaches and clubs. There are 20 lesson plans for each age group, (5-7 year olds and 8-10 year olds), developed by our Coach Force Officers Stu Chalmers and Leslie Wilkinson, utilising elements of existing programmes throughout the world and closely linked to the NZ National PE Curriculum.
SPARC through their Active Schools advisors have recently endorsed the Grasshoppers programme thus ensuring the quality of what is being delivered remains high for the schools and children, whilst allowing Tennis NZ to promote our sport to this broad market.
Key Components of the Grasshoppers Programme
* Games based programme - children always active, no standing in lines
* Linked to the PE Curriculum -
* Consistent framework - low cost, children active, teachers and coaches trained consistently,
* Inservice training provided for teachers and coaches
* Tennis equipment remains in the school - children "thinking tennis all the time"
* Each child receives four sessions from a Grasshoppers Accredited Coach -
* Culmination is a tournament held at the local club, thus ensuring the link to the club is enhanced
* Children provided with a certificate, which also contains local club contact details
* Creating strong links between schools, clubs and coaches![/i]
Thanks John.
My ‘research’ started with using small sided games for conditioning, but eventually I was interested how to modify game to practice certain techical or tactical decision making task in game environment. Eventually, I found out about Wlliams work on guided-discovery and constraint-led approach.
Mark Williams and Nicola J. Hodges , ‘Practice, instruction andskill acquisition in soccer: Challenging tradition’, Journal of Sports Sciences, 23:6, 637 - 650
The acquisition of soccer skills is fundamental to our enjoyment of the game and is essential to the attainment of expertise. Players spend most of their time in practice with the intention of improving technical skills. However, there is a lack of scientific research relating to the effective acquisition of soccer skills, especially when compared with the extensive research base on physiological aspects of performance. Current coaching practice is therefore based on tradition, intuition and emulation rather than empirical evidence. The aim of this review is to question some of the popular beliefs that guide current practice and instruction in soccer. Empirical evidence is presented to dispel many of these beliefs as myths, thereby challenging coaches to self-reflect and critically evaluate contemporary doctrine. The review should inform sports scientists and practitioners as to the important role that those interested in skill acquisition can play in enhancing performance at all levels of the game.
It’s the way I’ve coached team sports for some time but only really heard about it a few years ago. Certainly something pretty interesting to look into. How does it apply to athletics though?
I found ‘games approach to endurance running’ in Sport Skill Instruction for coaches, but haven’t come to that part yet… guess ‘games approach’ can be used in individual sports too