Group teach, done!
I have to be honest and admit that I have never heard of netball until Ally and Jessica suggested we to do it for our group teach. Jessica did mention that netball was not very popular in Canada, but that she had played it back in England. It was not surprising then that most of our classmates have never played it either except for a handful of people.
I was initially overwhelmed while we were doing research so I could understand the rules because I did not feel confident teaching something on which I have almost zero knowledge! However, we soon identified that our classmates (or students) might feel the same problem, and so we decided to modify it appropriately to suit our needs, which is simply to explore concepts of invasion games.
On the day of our group teach, I personally tried to avoid mentioning basketball as I did not want our students’ prior knowledge of basketball to be their basis for netball. It soon became apparent that that is exactly what our students did to try and grasp the rules of netball (i.e. “So it’s like basketball?”), which was my initial reaction too when it was suggested within our group. In the end, Jessica had to state: “Take whatever you know about basketball and disregard it. The only commonality between netball and basketball is you score points by shooting a ball into a basket.”
This kind of almost automatic response from our students made me think of how I would probably introduce netball at a much younger age, so there is minimal preconceptions of other invasion games, particularly basketball that might confuse them.
We made sure that our activities leading up to the game were essential, but moving forward, I might try the TGfU whole-part-whole approach and just let them play an initial game of netball before doing the drills. I was impressed with our students as they really tried to do the proper footwork (land and pivot) and respect boundaries (no contact) during the main game. Overall, I do think our group did well, especially since we introduced a completely new game!
Thank you, IB PYP athletes!