Elliot’s Perspective: Today Caroline and I played tennis again. (this is the 3rd time, and the 3rd weekend in a row we’ve played) I’m really enjoying it, and I’m glad we decided to do this for our project! I’ve learned a lot about teaching and articulating what I want to say in a way that Caroline and others can understand, and Caroline has improved her game so much already. Today we had a slight obstacle because Caroline was injured. She was riding, and she fell off her horse and the horse stepped on her leg. She had a huge bruise, and it hurt her to run and it hurt when she had impact on her leg, so we had to adjust. We did less of a warmup without jogging and focused more on stretching. Then we did more forehands and backhands, and today I even introduced her to overheads. Today we focused on trying to add more topspin and pace to her shots, which comes from form and technique. Caroline did really well with this on her forehands and backhands, so I showed her what an overhead was and taught her how to hit one. She did great! After that, she worked on serving for a little, and then we rallied. We didn’t do too much because it hurt her to run, so we kept the running minimal. Overall, I’m really happy with how she played today, and I was proud of myself for teaching her effectively. It’s awesome to see her game progressing, and I’m looking forward to our next playing session.
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Elliot’s Perspective:We played tennis again this weekend! We actually had less conflict with schedules this week, so Caroline was able to come to my house and we played up at the Bermuda Run tennis courts. I think it went really well! I told her we were going to crack down and work on technique and execution of different shots. First, just like last week, we stretched and did muscle activation exercises. Then, I showed Caroline how to do shadow swings. Shadow swings are when you swing your racket like you would when you’re playing, but there’s no tennis ball you have to hit. This allows you to focus on the actual swing, instead of the results of a swing when you hit a tennis ball. After this, we started hitting. I fed Caroline some forehands and backhands, and there was a noticeable improvement from last week. I showed her how to get topspin on your shots, and we broke down her swing step by step. After this, we served and she did really well with that too. We rallied and that also went significantly better than last week. Caroline was able to keep a rally for 6-8 shots, when last week she could barely hit it back to me once when we were rallying. This was really the first week I was teaching her because last week I wanted to see what she could do just on her own without me saying anything. This time I went through what we were doing and I explained why we were doing it. I think I explained things well because she would always apply whatever I was telling her to do to her swing. Overall, I think our session went awesome, and I’m really looking forward to the next time we play! Caroline’s Perspective:This week is week 4 of genius hour and our second time playing tennis. We had easier schedules to work with this week so we were able to go play tennis at the Bermuda Run courts on Saturday night. This week seemed to go a good bit better than last week. Last week I didn’t really know what to do and I was pretty bad. This week, though, I was more confident and Elliot was teaching me better than last week. We started off with jogging around the court and then Elliot showed me some more exercises to warm up and stretch a little bit. After that, we worked on forehands and Elliot showed me the motions of a correct forehand. Then, she fed me the tennis balls, I would hit them, and Elliot would tell me what I needed to work on and what I could to to improve. After we worked on forehands, we moved on to backhands and did the same thing with those. Backhands seem to be harder for me, but they were still better than they were the last time we played. Once we finished up with backhands, we served a little bit. Serving is my personal favorite because I think it is good for anger management. Elliot gave me some tips on how to hit a better serve and we did a few more that were better than the first ones. We wrapped up with some rallying and we were able to rally for longer than we could last time, which was good. I think it went better than last time and Elliot is learning how to be a better teacher already!
We played for the first official time today, and it went really well! We both took the PSAT, so we went down to the High School courts afterward, and had our first official session. Today was just laying the groundwork for the rest of the project. We started off with stretching and a few footwork drills to get our legs going. Then, I told Caroline it was time to start hitting. I hand fed (threw the ball to her as opposed to hitting it) her some forehands and backhands. After that, I had Caroline come forward to the net to hit some volleys. She almost hit me, but it was okay because it was really funny. After that, we picked up the balls and went into serving. We went through the serving motion together, and did some shadow swinging (swinging without hitting the ball), then it was time for her to try it with the ball. She did really well, and actually made a few on her first couple of tries. Finally, we attempted to rally a little bit and Caroline even tried serving to me and we played out those points. Overall, I'd say it was a very successful day and I think there will be a lot of learning and improvements made throughout this 12 week period.
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For our Genius Hour project, we are going to be playing tennis. Elliot plays tennis, and is on the High School team, so she will be teaching Caroline how to play. We decided to do this because we are both athletes, and we thought tennis would be a good subject to partake in for our project. Caroline wanted to learn how to play tennis, and Elliot is interested in being a teacher when she's older, so Caroline will learn how to play, and Elliot will learn how to teach her.
Elliot's Perspective:
As part of my role as the teacher/coach, I will be the one documenting the experience, and putting our video together. I have been playing tennis since I was about 10 years old, so I am pretty comfortable with the sport itself. The part of this project that will be more challenging for me is learning how to be a good and effective teacher. For a long time, I have thought about being a teacher as my profession when I graduate. This project will be a good way for me to test the waters of teaching as well as challenge myself to be a good teacher for Caroline.
Caroline's Perspective:
I, Caroline, will be the one learning how to play tennis in our project. I think this project will provide both of us a good challenge and it will be interesting to see how we both progress throughout the course of the project. This project will definitely be something different for both of us, but especially me. I play sports and have done a few different ones in the past including soccer, swimming, and horse riding. The only sport that I have stuck with and am still doing now is horse riding. I have been riding horses for almost 10 years now so I am pretty comfortable and familiar with it. Tennis is, obviously, quite different to horse riding and had I kept going with soccer, for example, this project might be less foreign for me. My hand-eye coordination is pretty much non-existent and tennis requires a lot of that so it will definitely be new territory for me.
We are both excited to learn new things!
Elliot's Perspective:
As part of my role as the teacher/coach, I will be the one documenting the experience, and putting our video together. I have been playing tennis since I was about 10 years old, so I am pretty comfortable with the sport itself. The part of this project that will be more challenging for me is learning how to be a good and effective teacher. For a long time, I have thought about being a teacher as my profession when I graduate. This project will be a good way for me to test the waters of teaching as well as challenge myself to be a good teacher for Caroline.
Caroline's Perspective:
I, Caroline, will be the one learning how to play tennis in our project. I think this project will provide both of us a good challenge and it will be interesting to see how we both progress throughout the course of the project. This project will definitely be something different for both of us, but especially me. I play sports and have done a few different ones in the past including soccer, swimming, and horse riding. The only sport that I have stuck with and am still doing now is horse riding. I have been riding horses for almost 10 years now so I am pretty comfortable and familiar with it. Tennis is, obviously, quite different to horse riding and had I kept going with soccer, for example, this project might be less foreign for me. My hand-eye coordination is pretty much non-existent and tennis requires a lot of that so it will definitely be new territory for me.
We are both excited to learn new things!
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