We learn skipping every year, generally it’s a 4 week and it is taught from preps to year 6.  The spread is competencies in a typical class is immense.  Also, the individual competencies generally doesn’t follow where we often think the kids are at.  For example, the girls that skip long rope at lunchtime are well above some of the lads that play footy on the oval.  (It’s great to see the pride in their faces when they are called up to demostrate as they are the experts!)

In one class I have kids that can do cross-overs, double skips and stuff that isn’t in my lesson plans, whilst others struggle to rack up 2 continual skips.  The learning intentions are therefore too far reaching to mention to an overall class other than “By the end of this class, everybody in this class will be a better skipper than they are now”.  Then we talk about how can we improve a skill ie persistance, concentrating, trying things, risk taking etc.  Students break up into smaller groups with an expert in each.  Then it is about getting to everyone setting individual challenges.  ie Julian started the lesson being able to skip only about 5 rotations before stopping.  He was going too fast and lacked control of the rope.  He was set a target of ten and told the secret to meeting this target was too slow it down.  Voila, after little time he achieved 10 plus skips and acheived his learning intention of being a better skipper by the end of the class.