Experiences of a PGCE with PE specialism

n.b: As we embark on a journey with a new group of teacher trainees, we're reflecting on the experiences of SPIRALPE advocate and former Leeds Beckett PGCE with PE specialism teacher trainee, Nick Lomas. (this blog was first published in Augut 2018).

Welcome!

Hello! My name is Nicholas Lomas and I am currently studying Primary PGCE 5-11 with P.E at Leeds Beckett University. Since graduating from Sheffield Hallam in 2016, I went onto work in two contrasting schools as a graduate teacher and boarding assistant at Heath Mount Preparatory School and Stamford Junior School. At these schools, I was predominantly working in vibrant P.E departments, teaching P.E and games to children aged 5-13.

These experiences installed a great passion for teaching young children, and this is why I wanted to undertake a PGCE at Leeds Beckett University. I was ever-so grateful for the opportunities I had at those schools, as they gave me a chance to learn on the job in challenging environments. I wasn’t just learning about the teaching side of the job, but the pastoral side too, which gave me a grounding in the ever-changing world of teaching. I would like to think that if I went back to either school now, former professionals would be impressed by my maturity, application, knowledge and passion as a trainee teacher. I was thankful for what I learnt at those schools, I was incredibly raw but I feel that I have now shaped into a promising trainee teacher, whose journey is only just starting! Starting a PGCE not only makes you stand up and be counted, but it opens your eyes into the demanding world that for some reason, we love!

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ndertaking a PGCE is an eye-opening experience, and a challenging one at that. I think if any of peers heard the term ‘dog years’ they would laugh, but also agree on what is expected of us. The master’s modules were insightful and gave me an opportunity to wider my academic knowledge on teaching, and to appreciate different pedagogical approaches to the profession. Along with all of our master’s modules, we had regular P.E specialism days that were led by our course Leader, Paul Ogilvie. As a course, we were lucky to have someone so passionate and educated about passing on their experience and expertise to us. Our specialism days consisted of learning first hand on what constitutes good and positive teaching practice. Throughout my time at university, our training consisted of training in areas such as; swimming, dance, gymnastics and OAA. As a course, we all had a solid base of teaching and coaching sports that are very accessible, for example football and netball, but it was these phase focus days on the elements of P.E that I wasn’t as familiar too, that helped me the most and gave me the confidence to go out and deliver P.E in primary schools.

We were taken on a learning journey on these phase focus days as we were taking up the role of the children. There was a vast range of ability and confidence on show, which made us think and act in many different ways. When gymnastics was our phase focus, I instantly felt conscious of my lack of confidence surrounding gymnastics, both teaching and performing. Therefore, this allowed me to relate to what children would be feeling like when walking into a gymnastics lesson. We had to partner up with someone, and I was lucky to partner someone with more experience and confidence, which allowed me to come out of my shell more to try and perform at a higher level. This is something I could relate to when teaching, to get children to believe in themselves to be able to perform. In that particular phase focus day, we filmed our final performances for show at the end of the session. The filming of these routines we created, helped me when teaching gymnastics. When I first introduced gymnastics as the next module to my Y4 class at Collingham LEH CoE Primary School, I played one of the videos and we had a class discussion about what we will be trying to achieve over the coming weeks. The children were already familiar with gymnastics as they had a coach previously, and my role was to use all of that prior knowledge and apply it to create a routine. When the children saw the video of myself in a routine, they were encapsulated. They saw that I was trying something that I wasn’t comfortable with and I was executing it to the best of my ability (once they could see after laughing so much!). This gave them the belief to be able to perform in groups, and this let me appreciate the anxiousness and reluctance of taking part that the children face. I have found that a lack of self-belief is sometimes installed in some children when it comes to the approaches of P.E and it baffles me to why. I feel that irrespective of their ability, children should be able to enjoy their physical activity, and this is something that I strive to achieve.

We were lucky to have Paul as our course leader as he utilised his contacts to provide us with valuable training opportunities. Nick Powell (no, not the Wigan Athletic footballer) from PE PARTNER came to visit us to introduce us to SPIRALPE, which is a P.E teaching scheme. ‘A Spiral Curriculum is an approach to education that introduces key concepts to students at a young age and covers these repeatedly, with increasing degrees of complexity.’ During my time at Collingham in phase 1 and 2, I used this scheme when teaching year 2 and year 4 and the children reacted positively to it. The games were modern and easily differentiated through the ‘STEP’ idea, which is changing the ‘space, task, equipment and people’ in order meet individual needs. We were also supplied with a whiteboard that was an essential part in delivering the lessons. It has three components: learning objective, I can and keywords. Arguably, this whiteboard is one of the most important pieces of the lesson. Maths, English and any other classroom subject will have at least a learning objective so why shouldn’t physical education have one advertised in the lesson? You don’t have to have a book to have an object. I have often worked with a whiteboard in a sports hall, but this SPIRALPE whiteboard gives the lesson a positive direction and states what is expected of the children by the end of the lesson. This scheme has added real value to the delivery of my P.E lessons by allowing the children to follow a learning objective just like in the classroom. I think this is one of the biggest parts of teaching P.E that is left behind.

Why can’t P.E be treated like any other subject with regards to educational value?

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You can follow Nick's journey in teaching on twitter at @_mrlomas