In my second placement school I was given a year 10 boys GCSE practical class to teach once a week.  In this lesson students were learning how to play the game of Badminton to GCSE standard. In this lesson in particular we were learning how to perform a ‘smash shot’ and a ‘drop shot’ with the aim of being able to perform this skill in isolation and game situations effectively.

The following drill was set up and was commented on by my observer as being a really good example of using differentiation to help pupils progress while using a competitive angle to keep students enthused and engaged.

Drill: Smash Shot practice

• Students put into groups of 6 (can be adapted depending on numbers)
• 6 badminton courts set up in a line (can be adapted depending on space)
• 1 student stands on one side of the court as ‘SERVER’
• other 5 students ‘SMASHERS’ stand at the back of the court at the opposite end
• SERVER will stand in the left service court and will set the SMASHERS up by hitting a high underarm serve over the net aiming to land the shuttle around the short service line
• SMASHERS will attack the serve one at a time trying to smash the shuttle over the net using the correct coaching points taught. They will aim for the right service court for 1 point (anywhere within the box), the large hoop for 2 points (front of court) or the small hoop (front of court) for 3 points.
• Students will continuously take turns for 5 minutes. I will then blow my whistle and ask students who have received the most points?
• The 2 students with the most points will move down the courts to their right. The student(s) with the least amount of points move to the left hand court
• Students will then play this game a few more times, with me stopping it every 5 minutes to repeat this process so that the stronger players eventually end up playing against each other on the right hand badminton courts, while the lower ability players end up playing towards the left hand end of the courts. This allows for students to compete against players of similar ability meaning they can progress more effectively in an environment that suits their needs. I am also able to differentiate these groups individually at this stage for example by lowering a net if the lower ability students are struggling to smash the shuttle over the net.

The students really enjoyed the competitive aspect of this game and real progress was shown in the students techniques by the end of this lesson. This was seen during game situations with students completing a number of effective smash shots compared to the previous weeks.