Sport Education Model - First Experience

Cover of Sport Education Seasons

Well, there you have it. Day 1 has passed.
Besides having the past days being chaotic as far as catching up with papers and exams after going to the PETE conference, I would say bravely to have chosen the task to experience with a new teaching model. The Sport Education Model is brand new to me. In fact, even though I had heard about it, the first articles, research and text I read on it was Tuesday! A little bit late don't you think to start changing the complete design of my course? Yes, I agree but I am hoping it will be worth it.

Last Saturday I was in a session with Dr. Mohr and Dr. Townsend who are at Appalachian State University. They are the authors of the Sport Education Seasons Book.

In that session, the authors discussed the design of their Basic Activity Instructional Program (BIP) at the university where they use PE majors to help teach the BIP courses. I find that very intriguing. In my own education in Belgium, we as PE majors were also involved in instructing activity programs. Usually not at the college level but at the K-12 level. I think any experience the PE majors get as far as teaching PE is awesome. So I started to think about this idea just as I was finishing up creating my own model for helping new GA's with teaching BIP courses.

They use the sport education model as well so while I wanted to try out my own Instructional model for helping Teaching GA's in their first year of teaching BIP courses, I also wanted to try using the sport education model as they (Dr. Mohr and Dr. Twonsend) believe it to be a very effective model for teaching BIP courses.

SO here I go! I was in a slight panic thinking about the fact that I already printed my syllabus and was teaching this course today! I had 2 days to get organized and change my thinking towards the design of the course.
I email both Dr. Mohr and Dr. Townsend and they have shared many materials with me regarding teaching badminton using the sport education model.
So I started with the creation of the syllabus. I used the syllabus I received and altered it a little bit towards the needs of myself being new at this and the context in which I teach. The courses they design are 15 weeks long while ours are only 8 weeks long so I changed a few things.

A few preliminarily observations:

• they use physical activity logs to encourage students to increase their fitness and skill level outside of class. I find that interesting. I created these and hand them out and the students seem to be fine with completing them. The model indicates that you can provide them choice between a personal fitness plan and a physical activity log but I only chose the PA log as I do not see myself having enough time to test fitness levels. While we will be working on fitness throughout, I wanted to start small... and perhaps add more next semester. I just find 8 weeks very short, and really with Thankgiving, it is only 7 weeks we have class. So this is the one area I still need to explore.
• The students will be organized into teams of 5 to 6 and each student will be assigned a role.
• I will use several roles: coach, manager, official, fitness trainer and player. While all are players, the one assigned to the players' role will take on the role of missing students if there happen to be absences in the class.
• The course is designed as a season, with practices, tournaments and championships.A practice would consist of: Warm-up/coaches meeting, skill/theory/tactical review in teams, skill/theory/tactical instruction session with instructor, practicing skills and tactics, contest, and debriefing.
• The first day we go over the syllabus, the second day I will do a skill/tactics assessment and later will create the teams, the third day I will organize the teams, explain the daily routine, learn the history of badminton and do some badminton team games that foster team building. Than the teams are made and we go for 5 lessons through the above routine learning the basic skills and tactics. Later we prepare for the tournaments and we finish with a championship. The final day is a celebration.
• Throughout the season the students will receive 3 tests and 3 assignments. The tests will gauge at their content knowledge while during the assignments I will attempt to have the students connect badminton to the importance of physical activity. The 3rd assignment will be a personal reflection of their experiences using the sport ed model to learn about badminton. In one assignment I will use technology, probably collaborative wiki assignment. And in the other one I will have them the students create either a warm up card specific for badminton, a game card or a skill card that can later be used in my other classes. Each team will have to design 2 of each and they get to choose which one. (these assignments are not completely set yet)

After designing my syllabus, I was talking with Dan about it (who is a new GA in the program). I also mentioned my model I wanted to try out so I thought of a research/paper idea. Dan mentioned how he would like to get started with some research so we decided on a case study.
Dan would shadow 1 of my badminton class this next 8 weeks. After a month, we will sit down and I will explain the steps within my model to creating peac courses. Later in the 8 weeks he will design his Spring courses. In the Spring, we will have frequent debriefing sessions but throughout the entire process we will keep a blog of both our experiences.

Now for the first day:
- Overall I think it went very well but had some students who were let us say "less engaged" which bothers me.
- I guess what mostly bothers me is that some students will go out of their way to get an override, I talk with them and explain to them beforehand that they must be serious about being actively involved. It is often these students who look like they do not want to be there. So, I only had 1 or 2 that seemed somewhat distracted but I will monitor their activity level and involvement carefully next time.
- I explained what I meant by social and personal responsibility and showed the difference between a student in attendance and a student in active engagement. Some students I found seemed at times like I was discussing stuff they knew already. But in fact, when I asked students to move into the badminton court, some would not know the lines and when I asked them about the new scoring system, some students did not know those things either so I know they already learned 3 things!
1) Scoring till 21
2) yellow lines = badminton
3) any player can make a point, not only the server
- I had make to make it clear that using a cell phone in class was not appropriate ( I am all for technology but there is a place and time) and funny thing, I had a student in the open text someone... I actually read it out loud (because it was not harmful really, innocent I believe work related note) and said what would happen if I would see it used in class.
- The 2nd class I think I ended better as I let them just experiment with the racket and birdie.

What's next?
This weekend I have a few tasks:
- Read sport education book
- Create warm-up cards
- Create skill and tactics assessment
- Write out lessons for Tues/Thurs
- Create Personal and Social Rubric
- Check Badminton books

I am happy with day 1, now let's see how it progresses!