Research on the Teaching Practice of Middle School Table Tennis Clubs from the Perspective of “Study, Practice, Compete”—Taking Chongqing’s Excellent Club as an Example ()
1. Introduction
In June 2021, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the “Sports and Health Teaching Reform Guidance Outline (Trial)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Outline”), including the “four-in-one goal”, “health knowledge + basic sports skills + special sports skills”, “church, diligent training, regular competition” and other ten aspects (Yu, 2021) . To implement the Outline, in addition to clarifying the direction of “church, diligent practice and regular competition”, it is more important to effectively operate. How to effectively implement the “Outline” of physical education at the grass-roots level, in order to achieve the education goal of “enjoying fun, enhancing physical fitness, perfecting personality, and temper the will”, it is necessary for physical education teachers to combine the current physical education reality, tap into school-based advantages, and truly achieve and do a good job of “full, fine, and deep” in order to highlight the actual results. Different schools face various difficulties in their specific physical education teaching, such as lack of facilities, equipment, teachers, and financial support (Zhu, 2022) . This can make it difficult for physical education teachers to effectively implement their work on the front line. As a high-quality association in Chongqing, the Table Tennis Club of the High School attached to Southwest University has always adhered to the teaching concept of “let students learn and love national ball”, constantly explored the effective path of student association education and teaching process to help students grow up, and formed the teaching characteristics of “people-oriented, classified teaching, promoting learning by competition, and co-education of family and school”. By combing past practices, this paper aims to sum up experience and provide reference for peers to achieve the purpose of re-learning and further improvement.
2. “Teaching Unit” Essentially—Unit Teaching Practice of Ping Pong Club
The “Sports Unit Teaching” in the Ping Pong Club is a construction of “specialized learning or training process for sports” under general teaching conditions. The “Sports Unit Teaching” combines classroom teaching and sports training processes (Zhang, 2022; Chen, 2021) . The PingPong Club has a one-year teaching cycle divided into two modules: upper and lower (Table 1).
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Table 1. Table of contents for the annual teaching plan for the table tennis club.
Starting from students’ mastery and application of basic knowledge, skills, and methods of ping pong sport, with the goal to cultivate students’ core competencies in physical education and health subjects, the aim is to enable students to learn ping pong sport and competition through the study of this large unit while also being able to exercise regularly through playing ping pong. The content standards for both modules include basic knowledge of ping pong sport, technical tactics application, specialized fitness as well as general fitness exercises, demonstration and competition rules along with judging methods; observation and evaluation are also included. In terms of specific content arrangement between these two modules there is an organic connection where each module builds on top of its predecessor by consolidating previous knowledge while developing new ones gradually following a spiral-like progression principle that guides students towards mastering it step-by-step until they become proficient at playing ping pong.
3. “Hard Practice”—Table Tennis Club “School + X” after School Practice
School is the main position to carry out extracurricular sports training, sufficient hardware and time arrangement is the necessary guarantee for students to improve sports skills (Xuan, 2023) . Outside the campus, choosing suitable training methods, venues and exercise groups is a necessary supplement for students to improve their sports skills. “Diligent practice” needs to rely on the complementary and effective practice mode inside and outside the school to ensure the practice time and density of sports technology. The school table tennis club teaching hardware is sufficient to meet the needs of daily teaching. There are 20 indoor standard table tennis tables, 4 professional rainbow game tables, 2 professional service machines and a sufficient amount of table tennis bats and teaching balls. During the normal teaching period, the fourth period of every Monday afternoon and after class on Friday are unified teaching activities for the community. In addition, the venue is open to the public during lunch and dinner every day to ensure students’ after-school training needs. At the same time, junior high school student’s physical education elective course and high school module elective course can also achieve the needs of school practice learning. During the long holidays, the club teachers will record relevant micro-class videos to arrange corresponding off-campus training guidance and suggestions for students of different levels, and advocate completing “parent-child homework” together with the company of parents. Encourage parents and students to go to the nearest venues for practice or training, maximize the protection of off-campus training and learning time, and strengthen “home school” co-parenting, advocating an active and healthy lifestyle. The relevant practice is supported and loved by parents.
4. “Regular Competition”—The “Assessment + Competition” Activities of the Table Tennis Association Practice
“Promoting training by examination” and “promoting training by competition” is an important way to improve students’ sports skills.
With reference to the overall design of the “three-level and nine-level system” issued by the China Table Tennis Academy in 2017 (hereinafter referred to as the “Standard”), the overall design of the “three-level and nine-level system” and the assessment subjects of each level, combined with the actual teaching of table tennis courses, are divided into four levels corresponding to the ninth level of the “Standard”. They are elementary (level 1), control (level 2.3.4), use (level 5.6), and proficiency (level 7.8.9) (Table 2). According to different students engaged in table tennis learning time and technical ability as a reference basis to achieve the level assessment test, two relevant level tests will be organized each semester, which is equivalent to the cultural half-term and final exam. Students who pass the relevant level tests will be awarded grade certificates and given certain rewards, which will largely mobilize the enthusiasm of students to take the initiative to practice.
In terms of event organization, the combination of “small, medium and large” is adopted. “Small” means that the small points competition is held irregularly within the club depending on the club class and weekend time, and the top eight players will get corresponding points; “Middle” means that each grade will hold table tennis challenge in turn by semester, and relevant events will be set up at the grade level; “Big” is to rely on the annual school Colorful Sports Festival to conduct a school-wide selection of table tennis competitions at the urban level, so that students can compete and have competitions to play, and increase students’ participation.
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Table 2. Table tennis level test design list of students in High School affiliated to Southwest University.
5. Evaluation of Learning Achievement and Teaching Effect Based on Stratified Teaching and “Standards”
The assessment and evaluation process of students’ learning performance should be the same as the principle of individual difference in the hierarchical teaching process, focusing on students’ growth and progress space, and at the same time effectively reflecting students’ skill level after learning and training (Yu, 2018) . Scientific comprehensive assessment can stimulate students’ enthusiasm and correctly understand their own progress and direction of effort. The instruction of design is structured hierarchically, with teachers developing distinct teaching materials tailored to students’ varying levels, and paying more attention to teaching levels, so as to formulate specific teaching objectives and teaching contents at each level. Use multimedia equipment to record and explain teaching points at different levels, technical demonstration, decomposition exercises and training methods in advance to make micro-lesson videos (Ji, 2022) . Therefore, the “28 system” scoring standard has been formulated. “Two” is the proportion of students’ daily performance, including attendance, learning attitude and mutual assistance contribution; “Eight” is the proportion of skills assessment. The grade test is conducted according to the test standards of Level 9 in the “Standard”, respectively, the initial grade, the final grade and the score of the student are determined, and the final skill score = 10*(the final grade − the initial grade) + the final grade. The assessment method fully considers the difference of students’ learning starting point and attaches importance to individual growth in the learning process. Students can clearly understand and recognize their own level, help students maintain their enthusiasm for learning, and avoid negative psychology caused by comparison with high-level students.
Students’ evaluation of teachers’ teaching can directly and truly reflect the teaching effect, and summarize the problems and deficiencies in the teaching process through the feedback information of students, so as to timely correct them in the next round of teaching and constantly improve the teaching level of teachers. After the end of the semester, an anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted for all the students to understand the students’ learning situation through surveys of different dimensions. The questionnaire adopted a five-point scoring method, and each statement had five answers:”strongly agree”, “agree”, “not sure”, “disagree” and “strongly disagree”, which were recorded as 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Finally, a column for students’ suggestions was added.
6. Conclusion
Let every student master at least one sports skill is the long-cherished wish of every physical education worker, but to achieve this goal is the mission of every front-line physical education worker, so we need to do a lot of practical, detailed, deep, invisible, and intangible work. Although the road is far, the line is coming.