Transforming Play : Teaching Tactics and Game Sense

The traditional, highly structured, teacher-directed approach of teaching tactics and skills separate from games is quite boring for kids—who, after all, just want to play the game. Transforming Play: Teaching Tactics and Game Sense shows you how to use games to keep kids active and involved. It also shows you how to teach kids the fundamental movement skills and knowledge of basic game strategy that will help them develop a lifelong love of activity. You will learn how using a game sense approach to teaching games and sports can make activity meaningful for all kids, from the novice to the very skilled.

Transforming Play: Teaching Tactics and Game Sense includes

• an introduction that explains the principles of using games to develop key skills and tactics;

• vividly illustrated games that you can use immediately to develop kids’ gross motor skills and tactical understanding, which can be transferred to and used in many popular sports;

• lesson plans that demonstrate how game sense can be used in teaching school sports;

• questions and coaching points you can use at key moments in teaching tactics and strategy as the kids play the games; and

• support material for authentic assessment that enhances rather than intrudes on the learning experience.

Sports are for everyone, not just the athletically inclined. With Transforming Play: Teaching Tactics and Game Sense, you have access to proven tools for teaching students the simple skills and strategies that will equip them to enjoy sports and physical activity now and throughout their lives.

Dennis G. Slade, MPhil, is a senior lecturer and coordinator of the BEd secondary physical education degree at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has played national and international sport and is currently a member of the New Zealand men’s masters field hockey team. He has had a long career in teaching physical education and coaching sport and was the head coach of the New Zealand U16 boys’ field hockey academy. Dennis is the author of Senior School Physical Education: A Course Book for New Zealand Schools (two editions), Teaching Attack and Defence in Team Games: A TGfU Approach (5 reprints) and a CD-ROM Stick2hockey, a TGfU approach to teaching field hockey to novices. He has presented at two international TGfU conferences, was the keynote presenter for the West Zone Physical Education Conference in Singapore (2006) and has presented numerous workshops on TGfU and game sense approaches to game instruction in New Zealand. His research interests include youth and masters sport, the TGfU and game sense methodologies, and physical activity.