Welcome back to another installment of our series of how to improve the lives of individuals with autism
through exercise
Once again we have one of our exercise connections champions Noel here to show you one of his favorite sports
basketball
and I'm really excited that we have someone from NCPAD here, Ms. Allison, to help us out as well
Allison can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
Yes! I am an exercise physiologist with NCPAD. I'm helping to develop fitness and health promotion resources for people with disability
Awesome, awesome!
What we are gonna do is we're gonna take you through basketball
which as I mentioned is one of Noel's favorite sports and plays on a team in his local community
We are going to break down the skills of basketball and show you how we may put them or you may put them together
in a classroom or in a gym environment like we're in now
So what I saw that was very challenging for the students when I was working at a school for children with autism
is they would typically show, or demonstrate one type of visual support
to explain the entire game of basketball
and it may be something like we have which was only a basketball game photo
so what we did at the exercise connection was develop a series of visual support cards to explain to the children, visually
the skills of basketball and to better help them understand, visually what we were asking them to do
So Noel is going to be the basketball player for today, right?
Great!
And Allison is going to be his support worker
because it's very important that you understand that your support worker plays a crucial
crucial role in helping our kids have success in a gym setting or in a classroom
and we're gonna have the exercise cards at each station
as we've shown through other examples in this series
The exercise card not only helps the child or the adult on the spectrum
but can be very beneficial to the support worker
to showing them what you want them to do or teach to their student, right?
Right
Alright so we are gonna go through these three stations
The first one Noel and Allison and myself are gonna do is bounce pass and catching a basketball
Then the second one we're gonna do is dribbling
And the third one we'll do is shooting the basketball
Everyone's favorite is making baskets, right?
Right
Are you ready?
Ready!
Are you ready?
Yes! And so am I! So here we go to station one
Alright the first station we're doing is bounce pass and chest pass and one thing that I want you to recognize is
Allison is holding a volleyball
A volleyball or the sport of volleyball may be what engages your student
and they don't like to learn, let's say the game of basketball
but if volleyball engages them
then use a volleyball or as you've seen in other series
use a sensory friendly ball to start teaching our students the gross motor coordination
So again we're gonna use a volleyball for this example
Now I've chosen Allison as the para-professional who may choose the amount
but we're gonna do three
Chest pass
Very good
So here we go
One
Two
Three
Nice job!
Awesome job!
Next we're gonna do
Three
One
Two
Three
Four
Nice job!
Awesome!
So again we've just broke down the game of basketball by teaching passing
and again Allison did a tremendous job of leading and guiding Noel
and Noel again was so important were the visual support cards
and setting the expectation with the number of how many we wanted to do
so in this next station now we're going to take it one step further and we're gonna do dribbling
We are here at station two which is dribbling and what we are gonna show you is again
Allison as as a para-professional is modeling and doing the exercise with Noel
which is again a great way to get your children engaged
if you stand there as the educator or as the para-professional or instructor
and just point and tell them what to do that's not that exciting
Be a part of it
Show them you're engaged
and you want them to succeed
So that's exactly what Allison is gonna do and they're gonna do it together and they're gonna go forward
and then again to challenge their body and their brains
they're gonna do it backwards together
Alright let's see it
Ready?
Great job!
And what you saw was you saw Noel for whatever reason he was holding on to the ball and dribbling it like this
Not a big deal
He still did it he's still engaged but notice when he did it backwards he did it in let's call it the correct way
But either way he was still doing it he was still doing that motor planning and still engaging the activity
and coach Allison ended with a very positive great job and high five
We're now gonna take you to station three
We're at our third and final station of shooting the basketball in the basket
Everyone's favorite part of basketball
But what you're gonna see now is because if you remember station one we did passing
Coach Allison is gonna pass the ball to Noel and then Noel is gonna shoot it in the basket
Again following the visual support cards and successfully completing it and breaking all of it down
So here we go
Go ahead
Champ!
Nice job Noel!
Doesn't miss!
Nice job!
Alright so we just took you through three different examples of how to break down the game of basketball
And you can do the same thing with other sports
Breaking it down making it successful and building the children's confidence and self-esteem
And not only that
Remember if you are a teacher and you have para-educators working with you
You are so dependent on them and we need great para-educators
and empower them through the use of visuals
let them know that they can do this even if they're not exercise specialists
but that relationship that positive activity like you saw with Allison
clapping hands and being positive can make all the difference in the world for all of our children and students
So we will see you next time