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Dr. Rick Bell is an associate professor in the School of Physical Education at the University of Victoria. He is also the Director of Secondary Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education. His current research interests focus on field-based pre-service teacher education and developing games players in physical education.
Dr. Tim Hopper is an assistant professor at the University of Victoria in the school of physical education specializing in teacher preparation, teaching games for understanding, and physical education. Tim has taught at all school grade levels and completed a Masters degree and a Doctoral degree at the University of Alberta.
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You are in the gymnasium teaching floor hockey to a grade four class. Have you ever caught yourself calling out to the students "spread out" while they are playing a game? Or, while on the soccer field with a grade seven class, have you ever found yourself repeating the phrase "move into the open to get a pass?" We suggest that as physical education teachers we should be teaching our students how to use space in order for students to become better games players. Space, however, is just one of the tactical awareness components in games that students need to learn about.
In this article, we draw on Hopper's (1998) principle of play model and focus on games associated with the territory/invasion category of games. This model integrates the physical properties and primary rules of games as defined by two earlier game classification systems (Ellis, 1983; Thorpe, Bunker, and Almond, 1986). These game classification systems identify four game forms:
- target (e.g., curling, lawn bowls, golf),
- court or net/wall (e.g., tennis, squash),
- field or striking/fielding (e.g., baseball, cricket), and
- territory or invasion (e.g., rugby, football, basketball).
Teaching games should draw on basic schema theory (Schmidt, 1976), where principles and concepts from one game can be transferred to other games with similar structures and goals.
Teaching Games to Children
Teaching children to be effective games players is a complex task. Teachers should have a keen understanding of child development and an understanding of not only how to perform the motor skills utilized in a game, but the tactics/strategies associated with playing that game. Teaching elementary school children...