Ready, Set, Spike! - A Net/Wall Games Unit

Most recently taught: October 2024

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Teachers Pay Teachers link for the unit task sheets (Formative and Summative)

 

Key Concept: Relationships

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Related Concepts: Refinement, Movement

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Statement of Inquiry: A relationship between movement and refinement takes practice.

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Global Context: Personal and Cultural Expression (practice)

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Learner Profile: Risk-taker (emphasizing the global context, students will be encouraged to go outside of their comfort zone, trying different techniques and strategies.

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Unit Outline

 

In this unit, students will learn skills and strategies for success in net/wall games using the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach. The unit will cover Spikeball, Volleyball, and Pickleball. Alongside warm-ups, focusing on specific tactics, students will build their understanding through playing in modified or full games. Through the TGfU framework students will aim to appreciate the games, understand tactics, and build decision-making skills as they play, connecting technical skills to strategic gameplay. Students will reflect on their physical and interpersonal skills, analyze strategic decisions, and demonstrate their understanding of rules by officiating and playing matches. The final week features a student-led tournament, showcasing tactical knowledge, officiating, and gameplay in a dynamic setting.

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Learning Experiences

Spikeball (Lessons 1 - 2)

    - Spikeball rules and basics

    - Spikeball passing practice

    - Spikeball strategies and gameplay

Volleyball (Lessons 3 - 6)

    - Volleyball skill research and goal-setting

    - Volleyball isolated skills practice and modified gameplay

    - Volleyball gameplay

Pickleball (Lessons 7 - 12)

    - Pickleball rules and skill challenges

    - Pickleball serving, volleying, and non-volleyzone practice

    - Doubles class tournament with students officiating

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Formative Assessments

Class discussions on the key points for skills throughout the unit and how they are using interpersonal skills to compete and play effectively. Students will complete a reflection (Crit. D) on their experiences in our lessons after Spikeball and Volleyball. They will also reflect on their teams/individual strategies they planned to help find success in the tournaments and evaluate their strengths and areas of improvement.

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Students will officiate volleyball games and officiate their own Spikeball matches alongside the other team, using their knowledge of the rules to make necessary decisions. After gameplay and officiating students will explain common rules they enforced, and spotlight students who demonstrated strong skills, explaining why. (Crit. A)

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Starting each class with student choice time with the equipment to allow the teacher to observe which skills need greater focus.

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Summative Assessment

Criterion A: Knowing and understanding

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Students will explain their knowledge of pickleball by completing prompts, and questions, relating to their experiences when playing in, and officiating the matches. They will analyze strategic decisions they made when playing with their partner.

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Throughout the responses, students should use the key terminology that has been explored in the unit, especially when demonstrating their knowledge of the scoring system used in Pickleball.

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Criterion D: Reflecting and improving performance

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Building on their formative reflections on interpersonal skills, students will describe how they used these skills to be effective officials, and play with a partner. 

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Students will finish off Criterion D by summarizing their performance in this unit, recognizing their personal successes, and enjoyments they experienced.

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ATL’s focused on in this unit

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Thinking - Identify obstacles and challenges

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In order for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding (Criteria A):  students will identify obstacles and challenges by explaining their decision-making when officiating games and playing matches. They will cite rules they found easy to follow, and tough decisions they needed to make, physically, strategically, and socially.

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The strategy that will be explicitly taught is:

-identify obstacles: students will look at how they can be better officials, through research and discussions, and how they can set themselves up for success when participating.

-identify challenges: students will have choice time to work on challenging skills, and identify strategies to help their team succeed.

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Social - Make fair and equitable decisions

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Day to Day Connections: Making fair officiating decisions when playing in games and when officiating Tennis and Volleyball. When completing peer assessing tasks giving fair and equitable feedback.

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Summative Connection: Students will be asked to officiate without constant teacher supervision during our tennis tournament. Students must find ways to be trustworthy officials for both teams.

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Teacher Reflection

(January 20th, 2020 Reflection)

Having soft volleyballs is vital! Especially to those who are learning the game for the first time. Our resources involved about half, soft and new volleyballs, and half older and harder volleyballs. The students had a tough time dealing with striking the harder volleyballs, while the softer ones allowed students to be more of a risk-taker and willing to take a chance striking in the game situations.

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Spikeball took some time for students to get excited about and understand the connection with other striking games but was a regular recess activity they were playing by the end of the unit.

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Tennis was a highly requested sport and students enjoyed trying out the sport, finding success in mini-challenges moreso than in full games. I would look to get softer tennis balls for next time.

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