Field Experience Day 3 3rd Grade 3/1/12

Skill Themes and Student Abilities:

Today was also the beginning of the basketball unit for the 3^rd graders. Since these students have already had two years of basketball units, we were able to move more in depth on skills for their first day. We started with ball handling and dribbling, as these skills themes are critical to moving with the ball. We used the same cues as we did with the kindergarteners for dribbling and this was a good refresher for the students, because we had a lot of the students slapping at the ball rather than pushing it to the floor.

After allowing the students to practice dribbling around in the general space we brought the students back in to start working on shooting. We used the acronym B.E.E.F. for them to learn the cues for shooting properly. There were 11 baskets set up all around the gym at varying heights from 5’ all the way up to the standard 10’ basket. This gave students the opportunity to challenge themselves, yet have targets that were very attainable. The student’s abilities varied greatly, because there were students who were able to accurately shoot at the 10’ basket, while some struggled on the shorter hoops. We focused more on the students shooting using the proper technique rather than simply getting the ball into the hoop. I stressed the cues and this seemed to really help students to improve their shooting.