Tag games session III

In this session, students kept presenting their tag games. I think that this class was very useful since it helped us to understand how important is to choose the correct games and to explain ourselves.

As future teachers, I think that we should focus our attention on the kind of objectives and contents we want to develop and then, choose the activities and not the other way round. Because sometimes some activities are very good but not for what we want to teach.

                  

In our case, we had to present a game which had two main characteristics: it should be a tag game and it should not be an eliminatory game. In order to do so, students had to look for the best activities even adapting some traditional games. As a result, some students chose their games perfectly because not only did they fulfill the requirements but they were also fun. Some examples of this were the squirrels and foxes game and the family chasing.

Nonetheless, a good teacher is not only the one who selects the best activities taking into account the context, but also the one who manages to explain himself. This is even more important in physical education which is a practical subject most of the time. Therefore, the teacher should be able to transmit the rules of the game in the simplest and shortest way so as not to spend so much time explaining. In addition, the teacher should check if the game has clear rules and if they cover all the situations that might happen while doing the activity. This was one of the main problems of the session, because some tag games were not as clear as they should have been and some problems arose during the presentations. From my point of view, some of them could have been solved at the moment, for instance, using bibs in order to differentiate the teams.

                   

Even though the teacher has checked the activity, it is likely that your pupils ask something that you had not even realized. As I see it, teachers should have another virtue: creativity. Since not all the circumstances can be foreseen, the teacher ought to have the ability to solve the problems quickly. It is a difficult task, but with commitment and experience, it can be perfectly achieved.

Now I realize that, most of the times, problems arise due to the lack of experience. For instance, you cannot predict if a game will be suitable or not unless you put it into practice. But the key to progress as a teacher is not to hesitate about your ideas. If you have worked hard preparing the activity, then the best thing is to try. Try everything, and although not all the activities will work, you will be able to improve little by little and gain the knowledge that only experience provides.