This lacrosse unit consists of four lessons that were taught to both grade 6 and 7's Physical Education class at Arbutus Middle School in Victoria, B.C.  The unit was based around the “Teaching Games for Understanding” (TGfU) model which uses tactical development as a focus rather than the traditional skill development in classical Physical Education programs.  With TGfU skill execution develops along with tactical understanding and decision making.  In this way students develop a meaningful understanding and appreciation of the game and the tactics and skills associated with it.   We created this website as a resource that can be used by anyone looking to implement a lacrosse teaching unit, or gather resources for lacrosse or other territory/invasion games.

The two main ideas we took into consideration when designing this unit plan were:

1. 1)there would be a diverse array of skills and abilities within the class, meaning the students may or may not have any background in lacrosse or territory/invasion games, and
   

2. 2)the students were in grade 6/7 (and so were fairly young) and may not have developed an understanding of tactical problems in territory/invasion games.
   

Because of this we decided to create a unit that would incorporate the skills necessary to solve the tactical problems associated with lacrosse, while focusing on solving tactical problems (such as when or where to move to space) that can be associated with all territory/invasion games.

The TGfU approach to teaching was initially developed because of how motor skills were being taught in schools in the early 80’s.  Bunker and Thorpe created this concept because they realized that teachers were using the classical teaching style, which over-emphasized technique.  this was causing students to leave schools without an appreciation or understanding of games, so they would not enjoy them.  This not only reduced game performance, but also future participation in activity. 

There are 6 main concepts in the TGfU approach: the game, game appreciation, tactical awareness, appropriate decision making, skill execution, and performance.  All of these concepts are based on the learner.  This approach is student centered and involves certain flexibility in manipulating constraints in modified games to increase the interactions between perception, learner cognition, knowledge, and skills in relation to a tactical approach. 

The reasoning behind the TGfU model is because of the lack of tactical perspectives in the historical teaching approach.  The addition of modified games into a lesson plan enables students to think about tactical approaches before movement techniques, which gives the student an understanding of why a specific game is being played before how it is being played.  Chow et al. (2007), pointed out that in traditional approaches to teaching, games skills are centered on acquiring relevant movement patterns in isolation of a game context, before using the skills in an adult version of a game.  The TGfU approach focuses learning of tactics and skills occurring in modified game contexts.

These modified games are an excellent way to develop the students’ understanding of how to play games.  It can be unnerving for a teacher to change from a teaching style they have become accustomed to, and implementing a TGfU style of teaching can be challenging, but using the TGfU and Sports Education model early in a students’ development shows great promise for development of all six of the main concepts behind TGfU, as well as social development.  The use of these models may help to increase class participation while giving the students a sense of how to play games.

As we learned in our field teaching experience teaching PE can be very difficult at times as there are many factors that we cannot always control such as timing, behavior, and equipment.  However, the most important thing that we have learned is that through the TGfU model what the student receives from the learning experience is what is important.  It is better to have given students the an appreciation of and an understanding of tactical approaches to games than the ability to perform a skill.  Students will be leaving the school system with knowledge that they can apply in different situations and an appreciation of activity and games for the rest of their life. 

References

Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., Button, C., Shuttleworth, R., Renshaw, I., & Araujo, D. (2007). The Role of Nonlinear Pedagogy in Physical Education. Review of Educational Research, 77(3), 251-278.