Practice makes perfect - Secondary students dance and juggle their way to mastery
By Eunie Jeong
From the start of January until the 26th of February for almost two months , all Year 7-11 students in RCHK have been engaged in a collective physical education unit, Mastery Makes Me My Master. The unit required students to choose a skill to do like a pro, and to document their progress. Ranging from skipping rope and keepie uppies to juggling and ballroom dancing, this unit offered a wealth of opportunity to explore new experiences. Progress videos each week were a requirement, with the final outcome a video performance.
The unit was unlike the usual Physical Education units, for as Ms. Shirley Yuen, on behalf of the PE department, noted it was “a unit that the PE department had written specifically for online learning.“ Because students could not come to school on a regular basis, sports involving a lot of equipment or space was infeasible. However, Mastery Makes Me My Master still required much concentration and practice, with much of the skills involving hand-eye coordination, strength, or cardiovascular endurance, and therefore, the designated time of six weeks proved a challenging limit to some.
Well begun is half done. This was a difficult task, as Megan Chan of 11.1 acknowledged. “Turned out ballroom dancing was a lot more varied than I thought...there were many different types and a plethora of moves. It was sometimes hard to figure out where I should start.“
However, due to online learning, teacher guidance was restricted, and challenges such as not having a safe or appropriate environment resulted in some skills, such as handstands and backflips, being prohibited. Students have been learning from videos available online. However, as Yuki Luo in 9.6 who was learning popping dance admitted, “One challenge I faced was trying to see more improvement, as there was only a certain amount you could learn online using videos.”
Certainly, demonstrations, learning from peers and having a “normal” learning environment might have facilitated students to achieve even higher goals. Still, peer review sessions were held, where students showed their progress videos to each other, further motivating students to aim higher and learn from each other.
Additionally, the opportunities to work on the skills differed across choices of skills. For instance, the students who chose skills which require going out to practise, while requiring a lot of space such as skateboarding, were far more circumscribed in their practice.
Despite these limitations, many have been making progress across the weeks. Aayush Mehta of 7.6 tried his hand at juggling. Halfway through, he mastered “juggling two”, and was already “working on the 3-ball juggling.” A variety of forward-thinking was essential in this unit. Without this, time could easily run away with no skills being learnt. Luo commented that “ [mastery] was attainable as [she] specified [her] goals.”
Benefits were seen and appreciated by students as well. Minhee Ho in 10.4 said that regarding her Robot dancing, “it'll help with my coordination”.
The progress did not go unnoticed by any means. Ms. Yuen further assured students that “I have loved watching my students develop and improve in their chosen skill, even though they had some negative self-talk at the beginning of the unit.”
Chan commented that “it's a lot of fun because we get to choose what we want to do, and it's a good break from a lot of other assessments we currently have.”
This unit, despite having many challenges for students to overcome, turned out a truly valuable experience. Who knows whether these skills will stay for much longer than six weeks designated? During this period of online learning, surely this amusing practical and extended activity has been important to our well being.
For many RCHK students, the saying, “Practice makes almost perfect”, indeed proved true.