The Teesra

Category: session planning

  • Whole-Part-Whole — time for another look?

    Back in 2014 I posted a simple page describing the “Whole-Part-Whole” session plan — play a game (“Whole”), coach a specific skill component relevant to that game (“Part”), then play the game, or a conditioned version of the game, again (“Whole”, again).

    Just a description, filed under “coaching resources” alongside some more traditional session plans (level 2, back then, was billed as “learning to write plans”), with no attempt to explain why it might be useful.

    Recently, the page has started to generate some more views — nothing spectacular, but as many visits in the last 12 months as in the previous 7 years.

    So I thought it might be interesting to take another look at Whole-Part-Whole (WPW), and why I still think it is a useful framework for session planning.

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  • After-school club — programme planning

    After-school club — programme planning

    I was booked to run an after-school club this half term — an hour per week, yrs 7&8.

    What follows is an outline of the programme and session plans, with an indication of the Objectives I was working towards.

    N.B. Most of the “planning” was actually done on-the-fly.

    I knew something of the School’s objectives in advance, and the session constraints we would be working to; I also knew what I wanted the players to experience, in terms of “skills” included, physical and psychological. But the actual “plan” came together on the way to the School each afternoon, and had to be flexible enough to be changed to accommodate e.g. fire alarms going off 5 minutes before the scheduled start time…

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  • Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction — 8.5 out of 10 ain’t bad

    I posted last year on my understanding of Barak Rosenshine’s concept of “learner rehearsal” and how it might be applied in coaching.

    Rehearsal is a key concept in Rosenshine’s 10 Principles of Instruction, developed in the context of teaching in the classroom. Leaving aside, for now, the question of whether coaching for (sports or movement) skill acquisition really does follow the same process as teaching an academic curriculum, Rosenshine’s 10 principles do (mostly) look to be applicable to sports coaching.

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