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Year 10 · Health and Physical Education
Unit: Game Plans: Creating and Refining Strategy · Lesson 1 of 5
Principles Before Plays
We are learning to identify the attacking and defending principles shared by invasion, net and wall, striking and fielding, and target games, and to link each principle to the movement concept that makes it work.
Before you startAbout 90 minutes · what success looks like · notes for the helper
About 90 minutes. It's fine to stop after the Quick Check and come back another day: the lesson opens where you left it, at the Quick Check.
You'll know you've got it when
- I can name an attacking principle and a defending principle for each of the four game categories
- I can link each principle to the movement concept (space, effort, relationships or body awareness) that makes it work
- I can explain why a principle stays the same when the sport changes while the plays change
- I can apply two principles in a slow 2 v 1 and describe what changed when I did
For the helperhow to sit beside this lesson, and what this step is for
This step: Spark
Start with the question at the top and chat about it. There is no wrong answer here: it gets your learner thinking about what they already know.
- Getting ready
- A soft ball (foam, tennis or a pair of rolled socks), a few markers such as shoes or tea towels, a flat clear patch of about 12 by 6 metres, water, a hat and sunscreen if you are outside, and five minutes to walk the space together looking for hazards before anyone plays. The 2 v 1 needs three people; with two, the 1 v 1 version in the lesson works. All told this lesson is about 90 minutes, more than one comfortable sitting, so many families stop after the check and do the chosen task the next day.
- What understanding sounds like
- Listen for your learner describing a move without the sport's words, such as 'she pulled the defender one way and used the gap the other side', and then saying where else that idea appears. That shift from the play to the idea is the whole lesson.
- A likely mix-up, and something that helps
- The common belief is that a play or a skill belongs to one sport, so nothing carries across. You might ask, 'If you took the sport's name off that move, what is it actually doing?' and 'Where else have you seen that?'
- If it comes easily
- A good challenge to offer: design a defence that beats their own favourite attacking principle, then say what the attackers would try next.
- If it's a struggle
- If it is a struggle, you might start with one category your learner knows well, name one principle there, and only then look for it in a second game. In the yard, one slow principle at a time with a single defender standing still is a good first step. If your learner does not want to play today, or games are a sore point, the principle hunt and the diagram need no movement and meet the same criteria. For a learner with English as an additional language, 'principle', 'play', 'strategy' and 'tactic' are easy to blur; the four-word explanation at the start of the explicit phase is worth reading together, perhaps with the words in your home language beside them.
Step 1 of 6 · Spark
Lesson 1 of 5 · Game Plans: Creating and Refining Strategy
Four games, one idea
For the helper
Start with the question at the top and chat about it. There is no wrong answer here: it gets your learner thinking about what they already know.
A tennis player drags her opponent wide to the left, then hits the next ball into the empty right side. A netball attacker takes two steps towards the baseline, pulling her defender with her, then cuts back into the open space and takes the pass. A batter lifts the ball over the gap between two fielders. A lawn bowler places a bowl in front of the jack to block the rival's best line. Four games, four rulebooks, and underneath them a small set of ideas keeps reappearing. If you can name those ideas, you can build a plan for a game you have never played. If all you have is memorised plays, you start from nothing every time the rules change.