The Teesra

Category: session planning

  • Session plan — off side batting, (mostly) back foot

    Session plan — off side batting, (mostly) back foot

    Working this term with a group of u11s, with the transition to hardball cricket in the summer firmly in mind, so I want the batters to become more confident when facing a short(er) pitched bouncing delivery. They will have done plenty of pull shot games and practice (bread and butter in soft ball cricket) but quite possibly nothing on the off side. Hence the theme for last week’s session was “back foot, off side”.

    The plan below is an idealised version of what actually transpired on the day. The practice and game both happened, but some of the additional constraints only came to mind mid-game, and I decided not to complicate the game by changing the rules half-way through. Next time, though…

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  • Session plan — all round fielding plus

    This session starts with a modified fielding activity from icoachcricket — “all round fielding” (I have also seen this called “fielder’s wheel”, “modified T-drill”, or Williams’ wheel (a reference to a colleague who particularly favours this activity), but then adds a competitive element — fielders vs. runners — to try out the skills under simulated game intensity.

    With the group I am working with this term (u11, transition to hardball), I had wanted to use a hard ball (or possibly a lightweight bowling machine ball) to get them accustomed to stopping and throwing a hard(er) ball, with the coaches taking any direct throws, catching with a mitt if required, switching to an “incrediball” when a runner is introduced.

    In the event, we stuck with the incredi throughout, for safety.

    But I think this works as a more active variant of the ground fielding drills we sometimes run with.

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  • My new AI coaching guru. A “conversation” with ChatGPT about coaching pedagogies.

    There has recently been some discussion about a new artificial intelligence (AI) system called ChatGPT, and a lot of that talk very negative.

    How it might enable students to cheat by writing their essays for them, how it might destabilise white collar work, even how it might become a “morally corrupting influence”.

    For all that, I thought it might be interesting to quiz ChatGPT about a current topic in coaching, traditional instruction, Direct Instruction, and non-linear pedagogies applying some of the concepts of ecological dynamics.

    And I have to say that I might have found myself an “AI coaching guru”!

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