Amount of Practice, In A Physical Education And Sporting Context.
What does it look like practically:
Teachers are constrained by time in achieving learning goals for their students. Because of limited amount of time, there is a reduced chance of students becoming efficient in a skill (Spittle, 2013). As a teacher, the aim is to increase the time spent by students being engaged and performing activities catered to the specific skill.
We can use a 45 minute long basketball lesson where the aim is to increase students dribbling and passing ability as an example. Teachers should try and spend no more than 10 minutes demonstrating the skills and rules. Students can get into pairs and perform various dribbling and passing drills to each other for 10 minutes. e.g Bounce and chest pass.
The remaining 25 minutes can have students in small 2v2 game situations in small grids, were the aim is for them and their partner is to get the ball across the opposition’s line. This incorporates a game situation to their practice.
Theoretical basis:
Learning motor skills in a school environment can take time. Most the students don’t get enough time on each skill, to learn the skill adequately. Academic learning time in physical education (ALT-PE) is a measure of the amount of time a learner spends engaged in the learning activity (Spittle, 2013). Students can engage in motor skills practice and activities for less than 30% of the session time, with even less time in practice; less than 25% of class time in skill demonstrations and instruction; and up to 30% of the class time waiting around. (Lee & Poto 1988; Metzler 1989; Silverman 1991). Within a practice session, your aim should be to have the students engaged for as much time as possible. If we don’t plan and manage the session pedagogy, you can waste much time on management activities other than practicing skills, for example; lining up, taking the roll, collecting equipment moving places and dividing up into teams.
For additional reading check out;
Our full depth piece)
- https://joshgosch.wixsite.com/practiceschedules/single-post/2017/03/14/The-Base-Theoretical-basis-for-practice-schedules
Or our references from the articles)
-Chapter 15 of Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition by Spittle, M.
-‘Instructional time research in physical education: contributions and current issues’, Quest, 40, pp. 63-73 by Lee, A & Poto, C.
-'A review of research on time spent in sport pedagogy' Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 8 pp.87-103. by Metzler, M.
-‘Research on teaching in physical education’, research Quarterly for Physical Education and Sport, 62(4), pp. 352-64. by Silverman, S.
