Teaching The Skill Of Sweeping

When teaching the skill of sweeping or brushing to novice curlers necessary to always remember the three basic fundamentals. These fundamentals are body weight, brush speed and footwork. Throughout the process of teaching our skill we will continue to highlight these fundamentals ensuring that our teens will remember them and hopefully demonstrate them as they continue to curl. During our teaching of the skill it is important to note that we will always be watching for unsafe practices on the ice making it a safe place and hopefully no one will be hurt. Also because sweeping is the most labour intensive part of curling during our plan we will be sure to watch our students, making sure we do not over exert them. We are teaching high school students …show more content…
One of us will show them how we do it and the other will discuss important things. We will talk about how should use the footwork to maintain the same speed as the rock being thrown. Also we will remind them that their feet should never cross over the should just be demonstrating a simple shuffle step along the side of a rock. We will also remind the students that it is important to remember that they should never interfere with the rock itself, they should never kick it or touch it with their brooms. After we have demonstrated the shuffle step we will show the students the other type of footwork called the in and out method. We will explain to them that this is a more complex type of footwork that should only be used if they are first comfortable with the shuffle step. Although it is more complex we will encourage our students to try this method. We will do the same for the in and out method as we did for the shuffle. We will first demonstrate how the footwork is done. After and during the demonstration we will give pointers on how to ensure you are doing the method correctly. Once both types of footwork have been taught we will get the kids to line up and go up and down the ice using whichever type of footwork they are comfortable with. Assuming most students will start with the shuffle step we will encourage them to try out the in and out method when they are comfortable. While the students are going up and down the ice practicing us teacher will be watching each student to give pointers and try to help then be the most efficient sweepers possible. It is important to note that we will be asking the students to just put pressure onto the broom when trying out the footwork. We do not want them actually sweeping during this step. By doing this we hope to allow our students to get more comfortable with their