I bought a great book: "Basketball Drills, Plays, and Strategies", by Adkins, Bain, Dreyer, and Starkey, ISBN-10: 1-55870-810-3. It is an ideal resource for a beginning coach or teacher. All of these drills came from this book. Our local high school coach stressed that if we at the middle school level were able to get the students to plant their feet and make a solid pass we could consider ourselves successful. Besides stressing defense and hustle, instilling the importance of thoughtful and practiced passing was one of our primary goals. At the seventh grade level we have very few players who can reliably hit an outside shot so it is not uncommon for all ten guys to end up clustered around the paint. Quick, quality passing provides the greatest number of shot possibilities and most of those passes end up being pretty short.

Warm up/intro activity: Skill: Ball Handling/Dribbling Points of emphasis (adjust according to age / skill level) 1. 5. . Activity/Game: (see games). Closing:

We always have to have the state standards in our lesson plans, so these are CA standards that correspond to this lesson. I'm not thrilled with the activites that go with the defense lesson, so feel free to add or change. I just thought this was an important (but not too exciting)element of the game. Standards: 1.17 Keep a hand-dribbled ball away from a defensive partner 2.7 Compare and contrast dribbling a ball without a defender and with a defender. 1.5 Dribble and pass a ball to a partner while being guarded. This game is one I like to play after the students have learned to pass. Use it if you like it. Ultimate Basketball – similar to ultimate frisbee. There are two teams, and the object is to score touchdowns on the opposing team – only by passing the ball (chest, bounce, overhead). The team without the ball may play defense but cannot reach in or slap the ball away while the other team is in possession. They can intercept and disrupt passes. If the ball hits the ground, it is a turnover, and the other team gets the ball (if you are playing with bounce passes, only ONE bounce and it has to be a clear bounce pass).Encourage short passes and quick movements without the ball. Introduce or reinforce (for the more experienced kids) pivoting and the pivot foot. Remember, no reach, and if there are fouls call them. Set a rule that the defense must give 3 feet to keep the ball moving. .

Alright classmates! I just put an outline for a Basketball Unit Plan up. I got the outline from Sather's section in Pedagogy Content. I set it up as a 3 week unit for 4th graders (feel free to change it that if you want). If we do one lesson plan plus one other elemenet from the list below...this will come together quickly! Here's what needs to be worked on (feel free to claim one of these): --Objectives for Unit Plan (Each student will...) --Grading --Monday-Friday topic outline/schedule(3x)- this will be the topics for lesson plans --14 Lesson Plans --1 Skill testing lesson plan for last day of unit --List of rules --Grading Rubrics used in skill test