Compatibility: Finding your starting point!
Welcome back to week 3 as we wrap up our 2 percussion premieres and our last few guard groups performing in the south! This week our trends for guard growth is focusing on compatibility with equipment and movement for our students within our individual shows.
When thinking about compatibility I like to think of teaching math to students. You would never want to throw an elementary school student into a high school algebra class until they have the basics of math mastered. Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying, and Division would all need to be understood before being able to layer these concepts into multiple step problems needing a strong background of mathematical foundations. The same goes for how we write equipment and movement for our groups!
On the Regional A sheets at the top it states: Regional A Class guards are comprised of introductory/beginning level vocabulary skills and excellence. Success comes from strategic choices in vocabulary that lead to the achievement of excellence. A class is exactly the same but the usage of “intermediate” instead of introductory/beginning. In the long run regional A and A class groups will be rewarded for how well they achieve what they are given. If students are not achieving their understanding of what has been asked of them they will see their excellence score be much lower than their vocabulary. Within the A class you get a larger percentage split that supports your score with achievement more than the vocabulary score. So, what do you need to do now…inspect what you expect!
Look at what you are expecting students to do and ask yourself:
- Are students struggling with the work I have given? (Is it new or do they still not understand or have the strength/skill to execute?)
-Are you building a training program that supports the work you have given the students? Across the floors, Flag and weapon basic training, Tosses, etc. Skills within your show should also be included in warmups and technique block.
- Students are achieving everything you have given them (is there an area that you can include lower body more to grow your depth, range, and variety or explore different ranges through space, time, weight, and flow?)
- Where are the judges saying you are falling on the sheets? Take a minute to pull up the sheet for your caption and look at your specific score in both captions of each sheet. This will help you to determine if the judge feels like some/most/or all of your students are falling within certain boxes and what those numbers relate to as far as progression needing to be made. Doing this allows you to know how you are being seen on the sheets and where to grow from there!
Below are websites that will take you to the judging sheets that can help you to start looking at where you are and areas to focus within your show to grow more within the sheets and the strength of your program through a basics foundation program. To set students up for success we must give them a strong foundational start in order to overlap skills and expectations on them within their show.
https://wgi.org/color-guard/cg-score-sheets/
(you can also view these sheets within competitionsuite tabs through your login.)
As always if you have any questions regarding education and moving your group forward feel free to reach out jamie@ffcc.org Good skill to all and look forward to seeing what new trends we see as we move into week 4!
