Teaching Games For Understanging

Teaching Games For Understanding (TGFU)

This is an approach that is "a learner-centered model of teaching, the approach is intended to provide learners with an understanding of the technical and tactical skills necessary to be successful across a wide variety of games and the motivation to continue participation." (Butler, J., Hopper, T., and Mandigo J.). This model was develpoed to give children a whole understanding of the game making the children "physically literate" which implies that children have the knowledge and understanding the enables them to predict the patterns of play, possess technical and tactical skills to deploy appropriate and imaginative responses and they are able to experiance positive motivational states while helping to facilitate modivational states amongst others involved in the game.

There are 4 categories to this model: Target ganes, Striking games, Net/Wall games, and Invasion/ Territorial games.

A quick definition of these categories are.

Target: to avoid obstacles and get your object closer then the opponent's object to the target (ex. curling)

Striking: to place the ball away from the fielders in order to run the bases and score more runs then the opponent before getting out. (ex. baseball)

Net/Wall: to send a object over a net or against the wall so that it lands inbounds more frequently then when your opponent. (ex. soccer)

Invasion/ Territorial: to control an object, keep it away from the opponent, and to move the object into a scoring position to score. (ex. capture the flag)

Step 3: is the Tactical Awareness portion of the model and in this particular step the learners develope an understanding of the importance of of offenseive and defencive tactics to the games that will help them to gain the tools to have an advantage over their opponent. Some examples are

Target: in curling there is a technique to holding your rock in your hand to get the rock to curl around other rocks in the way of your tarbet the botton. If you are steady with your push off and hold the rock correctly you will have an advantage over your opponent.

Striking: In baseball if the batter is able to hit the ball past the 1st base man of the 3rd base man this give the runners more time to run the bases.

Net/Wall: In soccer hard and percise passing of the ball in the opponents zone will be the key to get the defensive players to move amongst their zone and open up a shooting path to the goaltender. the faster the passing the more likely you are to catch the goaltender out of position.

Ivasion/ Territorial: In capture the flag you need to devise plans with your team to decide on runners, gaurds, and jail breakers. to out smart your opponent.