Rotate
£0.60 – £1.75Price range: £0.60 through £1.75
Ability to turn 360º in the water, instigating a change of direction whilst in motion (with aids).
BE11
Description
This award is designed to reward children who are confident enough in the water to change direction whilst in motion. This award is a key aspect in swimming safety, teaching the swimmers to able to turn and return to a wall or location of safety. This develops their natural response and confidence if they were to ever fall into the water, they would naturally turn themselves to a point of safety with confidence.
Rotation can be achieved by turning around in the water as well as going from on their backs to on their front and vice versa.
Additional needs
Rotation in the water is key for all swimmers, especially swimmers with physical disabilities and being confident to turn from their front to their back to breathe confidently if they were to fall into water.
This movement is also very good to support and develop core stability as well as allowing the swimmer to make independent choices and the ability to go where they want. The roll from front to back, whilst being basic, is a key skill for all as basic water personal survival.
Lesson ideas
Many games out there encourage swimmers to collect floating items and return them to a specific place or container.
Other ideas which promote water safety are for a swimmer to start at a fixed point or person and to independently push away from them to the teacher/assistant holding a woggle. The swimmer then turns around when touches the woggle to their starting place. This can be developed further as confidence grows for the swimmer to turn around without touching the person or woggle and then returning to start place. You can also add wet face on reaching destination or blow bubbles.
A game for the more confident is for the group to travel between different coloured floating objects or coloured areas on poolside and the swimmer changes direction when the teacher shouts CHANGE or a new colour to swim for. All swimmers should be travelling in the same direction.
Using the full width of the pool one side can be named Starboard and the other Port. Teacher shouts PORT and the Swimmers all push off from the same wall on their backs. When the teacher shouts STARBOARD all the swimmers rotate off their back onto their front and start swimming on their front, back to their starting point. The teacher can do this several times to practice the changing from on their fronts to on their backs by swinging their legs either in front of them or behind them.
Colours displayed may differ slightly from the actual product due to various factors like screen display, lighting, or the way different people perceive colours.
