This term’s PE is tennis and gymnastics. Tennis is taught in every year group in Key Stage 2 so this week’s was our first lesson and the focus was on how to hold the racket and have control when hitting the ball.
After a short warm up, we were divided into pairs and shown the technique for holding the racket. We have started with softer balls made from sponge until we are ready to use proper swing technique. Our challenge was to control the speed of the ball when hitting it to our partner. Through exploration, we discovered that the more we swing the racket, the faster the ball travels, the more difficult it is to be accurate and the more difficult it is for our partner to return the ball. Our target was to hit the ball so it bounced just in front of our partner and they could catch it. They would then return the ball the same way. Controlling the direction of the ball was quite tricky but practice makes perfect.
We were then shown how to control the ball by bouncing it repeatedly on the racket and not letting the ball touch the ground. The difficult thing wasn’t the first few bounces, it was managing to keep control of the ball. Once we had been divided into our house teams we competed with each other by each team member bouncing the ball in a hula hoop until they lost control of the ball. They would then be taken over by their team mate. After everyone has had their turn, we added up the total number of bounces to discover who was the winning team.
We are very much looking forward to our tennis journey over the coming years as there is so much to learn and eventually we’ll be able to play games against each other!
