Professional Learning + Video – Part 3

Special Report by Brian Rinker CC BY

This academic year one of the Middle School Professional Learning aspects is to have a video taken of you (me) teaching a class.  It is any class you choose (so bias expected!) and then I need to nominate a special soul to come and chat with me about a series of things that I can nominate.  I of course will have watched the video and prepared my observations and data for my learning partner.  This is something I am hoping to do in the next few months and I am wondering if I could ask one person from my school but also invite an external ISB person in to See, Think and Wonder about what I am doing as I teach.  (Andy Vasily, I am thinking about you!)

Over the last few year, I have spent a lot of time working to reduce Teacher Talk time and to engage in Teaching Games for Understanding; Sports Ed models and also work on Personal and Social responsibilities really trying to better understand my learners and how to best support them in PE.  This year I am delving into Diagnostic (on-the-spot) delivery of content (thank you Dean Dudley and Vicky Goodyear for your explicit terminology here, I can see that this is exactly what I am trying to work on) and making changes in the moment to what I teach based on what I am seeing in each moment.  This is really drawing together a lot of the model work into a hybrid model of teaching that must best fit my new students at ISB.  The way I was doing this at my last school may not work here, but this is a progressive experiment and things will inevitably change as I get to know my student body and the new curriculum.

But I digress…. Prior to meeting with my MS V-Principal to discuss my goals – he came out and watched one of my lessons.  I was working with my G7 students on Invasion Games in an initial lesson and he was good enough to shoot 8mins or so of video.

Along with the video, I was sent some notes about student engagement.  I was then asked a question for follow up:

“Student engagement after hearing directions or receiving direct instruction—Are students able to use this information in the activity?”

I had to consider what I was watching (and yes, I didn’t like watching or listening to myself very much!) but I wanted to share some of my reflection on student engagement.

In this clip the students were working on 2 v 1 with interception when they were the middle person.  

After 4-5 mins of activity and swapping out the middle person every 45s, we stopped and discussed one question for 3 mins

When do I pass the ball?  We came up with a list together that I tried to repeat/summarise for each step.

We then moved into the next activity – 2 v 1 with tagging as defense/ no overhead passing.   I did this to emphasize that as things get more challenging, we need to consider when to pass the ball and go through this list practically, and you can see that they are doing this.  I also made changes as the initial game was now too easy for them, so they were ready for the next challenge.

What I SEE is that they are trying different passing (and reminding each other of the rules)/ they are holding onto the ball and not passing when under direct pressure (but not always) and they are trying to move into space, but that the receiver isn’t always moving. 

Using this observation I diagnosed  (I THINK) that they were finding this challenging and so only made small changes (ball change) and asked them about ‘who should be moving’ to try and solicit the receiver to move into space for greater success.

What I WONDER is how can I find a way to not be watching time (for swaps) to allow for more formative intervention where needed based on what students are doing in the activity.  I also WONDER if my teacher talking is still too long.  They aren’t paying attention in the last 40s, how do I do less teacher talking and keep their attention?

There will be more videoing and more reflections ahead, plenty to consider!