Mastering Ball Launches and Receptions: Techniques for Young Athletes
**Justification**
The chosen theme for the teaching unit, launches and receptions, belongs to the classification of basic motor patterns. These are the basis for children to discover their body and interactions with the environment and will contribute to future development of motor skills. Also, within the skills, we will work on balloon launches and receptions, as they are playful, stimulating, easy to implement, and can be transferred to different sports such as football, basketball, handball, volleyball, etc. We seek to promote healthy habits and encourage students to practice sports in a time marked by sedentary lifestyles. This will be implemented through global tasks, participatory in nature, and focused on exploration to improve and try new motor skills.
**Student Characteristics**
This unit is intended for students completing the primary education stage. At this stage, students have reached a development of attention, memory, and knowledge that is more selective, flexible, and controlled. Their concerns are expressed through recreational and sports activities, rather than cultural ones. This is why we have set goals that are intended to help them complete their training as individuals.
**Basic Skills**
- Knowledge and interaction with the environment
- Social and citizenship skills
- Learning to learn
- Autonomy and initiative
**Learning Objectives**
- Acquire **launching and receiving skills** through the use of different materials to drive awareness of the possibilities that they offer.
- Make decisions in response to different driving situations to promote independent and significant learning.
- Explore and experience the possibilities and limitations of movement in the space of action through the use of different materials and obstacles to learn to use the space.
- Actively participate in the proposed work through games to welcome the possibilities of reciprocity and enjoyment of the task.
- Respect the decisions of teachers and establish group rules and standards to encourage acceptance of the rules.
**Contents**
*Conceptual***
- Basic topological notions: in-out, up and down, in front of, behind
- Notions of space, meaning, direction, guidance
- Identification of the motor ability to launch and receive objects: balls, balloons, etc.
*Procedural***
- Orientation in space in relation to self and objects (basic topological notions), along different directions and distances in an assessment of immovable space.
- Perception and spatio-temporal structuring of movements themselves with mobile phones, speed, trajectory, interceptions.
- Using different techniques of pitching and catching, adapting to the characteristics of the object.
- Selecting the proper motor skills for different objects.
- Selecting the most appropriate gesture for the activities.
- Implementation of generic launches and receptions from different body positions.
*Attitudinal***
- Discovery of physical reality itself, its possibilities and limitations, and readiness to overcome and make an effort.
- Acceptance of individual potential through exploratory activity in group activities.
- Acceptance of the activities to be performed.
**Methodological Guidance**
The methodology is based on an exploratory component. In most sessions, there will be time for students to explore, discover, and test their skills. The schoolmaster, always vigilant, will remedy the situation, giving rise to new behaviors or proposing situations that lead us to meet the objectives proposed in the session. At the end of each session, the teacher proposes a playful activity that allows the group to test his findings (lessons learned). Through the proposed instructional strategies, unfamiliar activities or those with some difficulty will secure initial learning or control of some basic objects with which we work. This will introduce temporary strategies as the working sessions develop. We will also use participatory strategies that will lead to achieving objectives of affective-social development and empower students. Finally, we will use emancipatory strategies to provide independent and guided learning. These will be used in advanced sessions where the student has already taken more control of the group work and responds appropriately to the organization of the task.
***Teaching Style***
Most activities will involve discovery and guided exploration. Exploration activities will be organized in class to invite a motivating situation for students to do, to move, to play, and to use whatever is provided. The teacher will adopt an attitude of listening and observation to the questions and situations that arise, always trying to give the most feedback possible.
**Evaluation**
The evaluation types we are interested in for this teaching unit are:
- An **initial assessment** to gauge the experiences and prior knowledge of students, and from them, connect them with new learning from the teaching unit.
- A **formative evaluation** to evaluate the student’s learning process and its evolution, and if they are meeting their objectives, to reorient education (considering whether to change methods if they are not effective, or combine them with others), to guide learning, and to look at the possibility of correcting errors by the results and the sharing with the teacher by feedback.
- Finally, we will use the **evaluation of teacher education** to evaluate from the point of view of students how the teaching process has been and to assess their degree of satisfaction with their motivation, what they have learned, if they consider that they have participated actively in their learning and assessment, etc.
**Adapting Curriculum for Students with SEN**
If we were in a classroom with a student with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), it would be adapted in response to non-significant curricular student characteristics, such as poor concentration, forgetfulness, restlessness, difficulty in organizing, oversight of their activities, and many mistakes. Curricular adaptation will slightly affect the design of some activities but not the curriculum described, as the teacher should only consider this student to have normal behavior with respect to the group. It must be ensured at all times that the child understands the task and try to avoid that, at times, physical contact with the rest of the group leads to conflicts.
**Baseline Assessment Criteria**
- Adjust movements to the characteristics of the materials used in different tasks.
- Use autonomous and significant skills and dexterity in launches and receptions, being able to select the number of valid motor responses to address new situations.
- Participate positively in physical activities, accepting limitations as well as dosing the effort of the different situations in the search for solutions.
- Participate, cooperate, and respect the rules, giving priority to the results and implementing basic strategies of games.
**Unit: Launches and Receptions – Session 2**
- **Cycle:** 1
- **Level:** 2nd
- **Objective:** Determine the body and its potential for driving through manipulation skills, ball releases, and receptions. Acquire throwing skills and reception through the use of balls to meet the motive possibilities that they offer. Respect the decisions of the teacher and the group’s rules, establishing rules and guidelines to encourage acceptance of standards.
- **Contents:** Concept, direction, and spatial notions. Procedural: Orientation in space in relation to themselves and objects. Attitudinal: Participation in group activities.
- **Organization:** Self and group.
- **Strategy:** Assigning tasks.
- **Materials and Spaces:** Balls of all kinds, one ball per person. Sports fields.
**Activity – Home (10 minutes)**
Free displacement, throwing the ball up and catching it without it falling, in different ways.
- **Role of the Teacher:** Monitor.
- **Role of Students:** Have they used different ways of launching and receiving in the previous session? Learn.
**Development (30 minutes)**
- Throw a ball against the wall in every way possible.
- Throw a ball against the wall and catch it after one bounce.
- Throw a ball against the wall and catch it without a bounce.
- Throw a ball against the wall from as far as possible.
**The Fly**
Several rows of 3 students are in front of the free wall. Each row has a ball. The first of each row has to throw the ball against the wall and jump with their legs spread at the time it bounces on the ground. The ball is caught by the second, who repeats the action, and so on. Each failure is counted with the letter M, and each fault thereafter until you complete the word FLY. The team that gets the least possible number of flies after several rounds wins.
**Who Throws Further?**
Mark a line on the ground with chalk. All students stand behind the line with a ball in hand. At a signal, groups must launch the ball as far as possible. When everyone has released their ball, they go get it and repeat the action from the other side of the track.
- **Role of the Teacher:** Motivate students to find different ways to pitch to the wall, according to the distance they are from it and the position of their body. Call attention to the students about different ways to respond to a pitch against the wall by changing the direction (and sense).
- **Student Role:** How have you thrown the ball? How have you placed your arms? What about your legs? To throw far, what is the right pitch? Are your arms above your head or chest? Have releases been coordinated with others?
**End of Session (5 minutes)**
- Recall among all how to throw a ball.
- How do you launch to go very far?
- How do you put your arms?
- How are your feet placed?
- How to throw a very light ball… and a very heavy one?
- **Role of the Teacher:** Review and consolidate what was explained.
- **Role of Students:** With these questions, has it become clear what happened in the session?