Tennis in Year 5's PE - St Vincent's Catholic Primary School

One of the sports we are learning this half term is Tennis. Following on from last week’s emphasis on ball and racket control, we recapped on the children’s forehand groundstroke from last year. We had to remember to make a ‘capital C’ stroke from above shoulder height, using our stronger hand and following through once we’ve connected with the ball. Once we were happy that we had remembered how to do a forehand groundstroke, we learned how to do a backhand groundstroke. This stroke involved using both hands on our weaker side starting from waist height following through over the opposite shoulder.

Working pairs, we practiced playing the ball to each other using backhand ground strokes. We had to remember that our partner was not our opponent so we had to play the ball back to them with control so they were able to catch it. We definitely didn’t want to make it difficult for our partner to catch the ball.

Once we had practiced the backhand sufficiently, we got the chance to apply our skills by separating into several small games with 4 people on each court. Working in pairs, our job was to use our forehand and backhand techniques to guide the ball into our opponents’ court and hope it bounced twice. If we played the ball and it failed to land in their court, we would lose a point so we had to be precise.

We discovered that it isn’t easy playing the ball gently within a small space so we had to remember the importance of control, which we learned in last week’s lesson!