Fast Five: Better Practice

"You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you 

become is very good at shooting the wrong way." - Michael Jordan


John Wooden taught eight steps in his Laws of Learning. 

• Repetition is the core of learning.

Explanation

Demonstration

Imitation

Repetition

Repetition

Repetition

Repetition

Repetition

• Use the '80-20 rule'. Spend 80 percent of the time on the most important 20 percent of the task. We can't realistically do that, be we can spend a disproportionate time on critical tasks including finishing and free throws. 
• Use "nonverbal correction". Signal players (students) with a sign representing both correction and redirection ("move on", "next play").
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• Model excellence. Watch other successful practices to improve your own. We can always find steal other great ideas and make them our own share. Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe criticized UCONN's excellence. That's disrespecting greatness. UCONN raises the bar demanding others to elevate their game. 
• Create a "performance-focused, feedback-rich" culture. To become transformative, we need clarity, communication, and connection. Players need to understand the priorities and emphasis of each evolution. Saying, "get back in defense" isn't detailed enough. We need to explain full engagement, positioning, protecting the basket, stopping the ball, "shaping up", and each specific we want executed. 

Practice Perfect by Lemov et al. is an excellent resource for implementing better practice

concepts.