Teacher

Function
During
Activity.
Teachers can perform many functions while students are
engaged in a movement task. Some of these functions
contribute directly to lesson objectives, some make only
an indirect contribution to lesson objectives, and others
make no contribution to lesson objectives.
Common Teacher Functions During Activity
Group 1: Directly contributing behaviors

Maintaining a safe learning environment

Clarifying and reinforcing tasks for learners
Observing and analyzing student responses
Providing feedback to learners
Changing or modifying tasks for individuals and small groups
Maintaining a productive learning environment
Common Teacher Functions During Activity
Group 2: Indirectly contributing behaviors

Participating with students and officiating

Dealing with the personal needs of students
Engaging in off-topic discussions
Attending to injured students
Setting priorities of what to do
first
Make sure the environment is a safe one

Make sure students understand the task and are

engaged in the task as it was designed.

Observe to determine the specific responses of the class

as a whole to the task in terms of the learning obective.
Adjust the task as needed.

Recheck continuously that student work is productive

Setting priorities of what to do
first
Observe individual performance and assist as possible

Maintain awareness of the whole group. Be alert for task pacing needs
and task engagement. Several ideas should be obvious from the
activities just listed.
 “Sometimes the best way to handle problems
that arise during class is to take a few minutes
before or after class to interact with students”
 Maintaining a safe learning environment

Safe learning environments can almost always be prepared for in advance.

Exerienced teachers learn to anticipate safety problems and to arrange
equipment, space, and people so that the environment both is safe and
facilitates learning.
 Common safety problems created by Teachers

Students are trying to perform skills they are not yet capable of
doing. such as vaults on apparatus or catching hard batted balls
from a close distance.

Students are working too closely together with striking

equipment such as rackets, sticks, or bats.

Activities that require students to move fast do not have

enough room to help the student slow down.

Choosing activities that put students at risk unnecessarily

 Common safety problems created by Teachers

Students have not been taught how to work with an awareness

of others and space, such as moving to catch a ball in shared
space.

Students have not been taught to work with control or the

teacher does not insist on control

Large pieces of apparatus and other equipment surrounding the

gym make an attractive nuisance.
Clarifying And Reinforcing Tasks For Learners

Teacher restates the task to reinforce on task behavior and hold

students accountable for the task as it was presented.
Example:

The teacher has asked the students to shoot the ball at the wall
so that they can practice rebound with a partner. After the
students begin working, it is clear that the height of the tappe
the teacher put on the wall does not allow the ball to bounce off
the wall in a way that would allow the students to get a gamelike
feel for rebounding. The teacher stops the class and asks
students to focus their shots considerably higher that the tape
on the wall.
 Maintaining a productive
learning environment

The idea of clarifying and reinforcing the task for the learners during an
activity is closely related to the idea of maintaining a productive
learning environment.
Example:

The teacher has asked students to work on a backward roll. Students

who cannot do a backward roll are likely to find something else to do.
Students lose interest quickly when the task is not appropriate
because it is too difficult or too easy. Again, the teacher should strive
to design a task that is challenging but not frustrating for the
students.
The following ideas will help maintain student interest and on
task behavior for longer periods:

Provide feedback to students on performance.

Provide a break from practice

Reorganize the practice

Extend the task with a lateral extension task

 Observing and analyzing student responses

Observation of student responses is an essential skills for teachers. You

cannot provide students with feedback, assess their performance, or
make decisions about what to do unless you can observe and
accurately determine what it is students are doing.
Teacher during activity time:

Positioning of the Teacher

Teachers responsible for a whole group of learners should never remove

themselves entirely from a position that allows them to constantly view
the whole group. Teacher also need to change positions to get a new
observation perspective when looking for different aspects of
performance. And where teacher stand affects the performance of
students.
 Teacher during activity time:

Determining a plan for observing large group

In studying observation skills, Barrett (1979-1983) found that if teachers

of large groups have a plan for observing individuals, they are more
likely to use their observation time effectively. The observation plan
may be (1) to scan the whole group for one particular movement aspect,
(2) to select a few individuals known to be of different skill level, or (3) to
observe only a few students at one time, selecting different students at
another time.
Teacher during activity time:

Knowing what to look for

If a teacher presents the following tennis task to a group of learners,

what should be looked for?

Example:

The student and a partner should send the ball back and forth to each
other with forehand strokes, concentrating on getting the arm extended.
 Providing
feedback to
learners
Feedback is the information recieved by the learners
about their performance

Teacher feedback maintains students focus on the

learning task and serves to motivate and monitor
student response.
 Types of Feedback
Evaluative and Corrective Feedback

Evaluative feedback occurs when a value judgement concerning how

well or poorly a task was performed is directly communicated to the
learner.

Corrective feedback gives learners information on what to do or what

not to do in future performances.
 Types of Feedback

Congruency of Feedback

Congruency refers to the relationships between the content of

feedback, the focus of the task, and the cues that teachers give for the
task.
 Congruency of Feedback
Example:

Congruent feedback for the task of driblbling a soccer ball while concentrating
on using the inside of the foot are the following:

“You’re still using the outside of your foot occationally

“Not the front of your toes john”
“That’s it Betty, the inside of the foot each time”
“Stay with the inside of your foot, Susan”
 Congruency of Feedback
Example:

Incongruent feedback gives information to the learner that may be

important to the skill but is not specifically related to the task focus.

“Keep the ball close to you”

“Watch where you’re going”
Negative Vs. Positive Feedback

“You’re putting too much force on the ball”

“Use less force on the ball”

 The following categories describe the
targets of teacher’s feedback:
Class: Feedback is directed to all the learners in the class.

Group: Feedback is directed to a part of the learners in a class.

Individual (Class): Feedback is directed to one individual so that the whole

class benefits from the comment.

Individual (Private): Feedback is directed to one individual in a private way.

 Changing and Modifying tasks for
Individuals and Small groups

Another major role of the teacher during activity is to change and

modify tasks to make them more appropriate for individuals and small
groups.
 Changing and Modifying tasks for
Individuals and Small groups
Change the content of the task entirely by asking individual
students to work on something the whole class is not working on.

Move students into or out of competetive stuations.

Extend the task laterally (another way to practice the same

task at the same level of difficlty) for individual students.

Prescribe levels of refinement or correct errors on an individual basis

Designing Applying/Assessment Task for Individuals

The Teacher can ask students to design a game using the skills they have
been practicing. Students who have competence and confidence in these
skills will be highly motivated by the oppotunity to test/assess them
under more gamelike conditions.
 Changing the task completely for individuals

Complete changes of tasks for individual or small groups are most

appropriate in situations where teachers have chosen to introduce
specialized sills.
 Refining the Task for Individuals

The Refining task asks students to perform some aspect of the original
task with better quality but also enables teachers to reduce overall
expectations.
 Refining the Task for Individuals
In the striking with paddles example, typical refining tasks might be the
following:

“Get your side to the net”

“Contact the ball farther from your body”
“Control the ball within your own space”
 INDIRECTLY CONTRIBUTING BEHAVIORS

Indirectly contributing behaviors focus the teacher’s attention on the

students and the learning environment but do not make a direct contribution
to the content of the lesson.
 Attending to injured Students

Injured students must be attended to. Once again, the goal is to handle the
problem in the least disruptive way. Most schools have standard procedures
for handling the problem of injured students, and teachers are obliged to
follow the policy.
 Engaging in Off-Topic Discussion

Discussions with students about intramurals, favorite professional sports,new

tennis shoes, or baby brothers may enhance relationships between the
teacher and the students but contribute little to the content of a lesson.
 Participating with Students and Officiating

In most instances, teachers who participate in an activity with students,

officiate student play, or merely spervise student activity remove themselves
from teaching behaviors that might have a more direct effect on student
performance.
 Noncontributing behaviors

Add nothing to lesson content.

Example:

Fire drills, announcements over a public address system, and conversations

with principals who enter the classroom and immediately want to talk to the
teacher.