The Curriculum for Excellence Course.
Inverclyde, October 2008 The Curriculum for Excellence course was … well it was excellent! That’s not just my opinion, it’s one of the comments made on the official course feedback sheet;
“It’s the best course I have attended”
Rob Wood and Tom Middleton had travelled North from Kent in the South of England to participate in the course. Joan Smith had travelled South from the Shetland Isles to join the group, a far distance for all. So there was some pressure to make sure the experiences they had while in Largs made their journeys worthwhile. The feedback from the course participants said it was ……Joan wrote;
“… now that we should be working with curriculum for excellence in the schools I feel a lot happier with the language and content.”
Volleyball is a perfect vehicle for delivering the Curriculum for Excellence, and the three day course just completed at Inverclyde set out to demonstrate that. The course participants had a range of experience of both the teaching process and volleyball as a sport. They were as enthusiastic about the practical sessions as it is possible to be, and in the theory sessions they relentlessly probed for better understanding of the principles being discussed.
Paul McPate wrote; “(this was) A good opportunity to explore volleyball delivery to children, supported by valuable experiences from course participants”.
I agreed with him. On several of the sessions we almost ran out of time because the discussions were so involved and interesting. However, the Inverclyde venue is flexible when it comes to the timings of the sessions, so we did manage to get through all of the work which had been scheduled.
I would like to thank the participants for their efforts, their outstanding good humour, and their support of Scottish Volleyball. Well done to Sandra, and Keith, to Lynn and Joan, to Tom, Rob and Paul, and I will give Tom Middleton OBE the final word, believing that he speaks for all of us when he says;
“For me this was an excellent course on all counts”.
Thomas Dowens
Director of Coaching October
10th 2008