Applying learning

Tennis (Part 1): Introduction

Physical development

﻿Hi, everyone, my name is Alistair, and today we're going to play tennis. For this lesson you will need a tennis ball, a frying pan or baking tray, a tennis racket, and a balloon with some rice. If you haven't got these items, you can substitute them with other things from around your home, and that's absolutely fine. Press pause whilst you get things ready. Let's get ready. Find a quiet, clear space to work away from distractions. Ensure the area is safe and that your child is feeling fit and well to take part in the lesson. Check you're wearing the right clothes for sport and physical activity. I'd encourage your child to be as independent as possible with this. Make sure your resources are nearby and use a familiar reference to prepare the learner that the activity is going to start. This could be a symbol, a sound, or even a song. Press pause whilst you get things ready. It's time to look, listen and learn. First, before we play tennis, we need to get our muscles ready for exercise. Now I'm going to use a balloon today for our warmup. I've put some rice in the balloon so it makes a really nice sound, so if your child is visually impaired, this will support them with this activity. And it just gives off a really nice sound, it's a nice sensory feedback. So we're going to see if we can keep the balloon off the ground. It's a really fun way of having us move in different directions. We're going to have to stretch. We'll have to crouch. It's a good start to our lesson to get us active and again, lots of fun. So we're going to see if we can keep the balloon off the ground. So it's a good way of generalising our skills as well. So we'll use these in our volleyball session, and you can see already how I have to stretch up and move around and the balloon gets away from me at times. And it's got away from me there. So have a go at that for probably two or three minutes. You'll feel your heart rate starting to rise, you'll start to get a bit of a sweat on, and you'll find yourself moving in lots of different directions and different ways. So next we're going to practise our stretches. Our stretches today are going to be seated and we're going to also use our tennis racket to support us with this. Let your child explore what a tennis racket looks like, how it feels. You've got the different textures on there of the string, of the frame and the handle of the racket. It's going to help us later on when we start to play our shots and get into some tennis games. So first of all, I'm going to hold my racket and stretch up as high as I possibly can. Imagine I'm stretching and reaching to play a shot, and then I'm going to come down lower and all the way, and lean forward and place my racket on the floor. And I'm going to come back into my chair and stretch up. Imagine I'm playing that tennis shot, and slowly again, come forward all the way to the floor. Lots of twisting and turning in tennis. I'm going to hold my racket and I'm going to twist very slowly to the side, keeping control of my racket, hold it, and then back to the middle. And then I'm going to twist to the other side, imagine I'm playing a tennis shot on the other side. All the way round. Can feel that stretch in my tummy muscles. And then back to the middle. Pop my racket down for a second. Just going to loosen up my shoulders. So small circles going forward with my shoulders, where our power comes from in some of our tennis shots. And then I'm going to do some small windmills coming forward with my arms. So that forward motion, getting our arms, getting our muscles ready for tennis. Have a good shake. I think I'm ready for tennis. Pause the video to complete your task. It's really important that we are safe when we are playing tennis. I'm going to have a quick look at how we can be safe when using our tennis racket. So the main thing is to be aware of the space around us, because it's really tempting, and it's exciting when we have our tennis racket and we could be swinging it all over the place. It could be really dangerous. The racket is quite hard and that would really hurt if we hit someone by accident. So it's really important that we have a look around. We make sure there's nobody behind us, there's no one to the side of us. And we've got some good space around us when we are playing tennis. Now in terms of how we hold our tennis racket. So we have, what's called almost a shaking hands grip. So we imagine that we're shaking hands with the racket and your child can practise that movement there. They might want to use two hands to support them when they're holding the racket there and have a two-handed grip. But again, that idea of shaking hands with the racket. And keep nice and loose and make sure that we've got control of our tennis racket. We're going to start off and practise our skills with a balloon. And it's a really good place to start. And just to see if we can keep the balloon off the floor and practise our skills in that way. So I've got a balloon here. I could also use a balloon with rice in if your child is visually impaired. So thinking about the STEP principle and how we can adapt the resources and the activities to suit the needs of your child. So going to have a practise with my racket, I've got my shaking hands grip. I'm aware that no one's around me. I've got a safe space and see if I can keep the balloon off the floor. So to start with that might be one shot. So I might just go one shot and catch the ball. One shot and catch the balloon. As they become more confident, they might try several shots. So just keeping the ball and the balloon off the floor, nice and controlled. We might have some higher shots. You might have some lower shots, down there. The balloon might get away, so we might start to move around whilst we're keeping the balloon off the floor. And your child might spend several minutes doing that. Again, if we can introduce some of the movements to this. You might find they're hitting the balloon higher, it might be going low and have to crouch down. So we're having that stretching and crouching movements there. And your child might practise that for several minutes. We can start to make the skill more difficult and use a smaller ball, so that could be a tennis ball. I've got a little softball here, like a sponge ball and the same idea. So we're shaking hands with our racket. And to start off with just one shot in the air and one shot in the air. As they become more confident standing still, see if we can keep that ball off the ground, keeping a lot of control there. There'd be lots of repetition of this skill so you have to do this a lot of time. This might be over a period of weeks that your child builds their confidence to do this. Now, if you haven't got a tennis racket at home, that's absolutely fine. You could choose another household item. So you could use a baking tray. I've got frying pan, I've got an old frying pan here. It does the trick perfectly. So I'll practise with the balloon. So starting off standing still, just simple shots with the balloon. I can move on to my sponge ball. See if I can keep that off the ground there, nicely controlled, and then see if I can introduce some movement with that. So that's a really good starting point, particularly with the balloon, of just seeing if we can keep that ball up, getting used to the feel of the racket in our hands, before we move on and start to play some tennis shots. Pause the video to complete your task. Good, start to think about playing some tennis shots now. I've set up on the wall my tennis net, so I've used tinfoil, just to mark an area here. So I'm going to try and hit the ball over that net. You could do this outside. You could use some chalk on the wall, whatever works best for you in your home. I've set up some targets there that I might aim for later. And again, I've used big, bright colours. And thinking about that STEP principle, how we can support your child and adapt the activity. I really would recommend thinking of using your balloons to start off with, to make the skill easier. It could be a beach ball as well, something large. And that will be a really great starting point for your child. Remembering the safety points, is there anyone around just here? And thinking about that shaking hands grip with the racket. To start with, I'd just go for one shot against the wall there. So over my net, come and collect my balloon again, go back, keep practising that, so that repetition of skills, striking. Oh, it's gone under the net, that tells us, I need to strike the balloon a bit harder. So you'll see lots of problem solving here from your child. So another try, that's quite a high one. And come back. After lots of practise there, you can start to progress the skills onto using a smaller ball. It could be a tennis ball or a sponge ball. So I'll just hit the ball up, hit my target there. Have a good practise at that, there's some ground strokes in tennis. You might come closer and practise some volleys and go against the wall, aiming for the different targets. And really start to build up into almost a match situation against the wall. So I can aim for my targets. You can have some volleys. You'll see how it forces me to move around there, I'm stretching, I'm crouching, as I'm moving along. As with all of our activities, we can adapt those for wheelchair users. So if I bring my chair in here, I can have a practise. I've also got couple balloons with rice in, that can support your child. So I pretty much sit nice and close there. And have that practise against the wall, trying to get a little bit of those different shots. You can see there's so much movement in this. It's a really energetic activity where we're moving around. I can then progress onto my smaller ball. You could use your frying pan for this or your baking tray. You could even use, if you've got, almost a magazine, or a large book where you could hit the ball or the beach ball or the balloon against the wall there to get that experience of tennis and striking the ball over the net. We're going to build on this in our next lesson. So keep practising away there with your tennis and we'll move on to some match situations next time. Great work, everyone. Pause the video to complete your task. To make our session easier, you could use a larger ball or balloon and practise using your hand to strike and make contact. You could focus on fewer skills and movements and progress at a pace most appropriate to your child. To make it harder, look at our masterclass session and explore top tips from an international tennis player and coach. Search for local opportunities to play and watch tennis. More ideas, ask your parent or carer to search for and watch tennis-specific content online. You could design your own Wimbledon Tennis trophy. All of our activities can be adapted using the STEP principle. That's thinking about the space, the task, the equipment we use, and how people help us. For example, using a balloon with beads or rice in to support visually impaired learners. We can use bigger, brighter resources, like our targets on the wall. You can adapt the space and activity to suit wheelchair users. For example, adjust the height of the barriers or net and adapt and personalise the equipment you use. Brilliant tennis, everyone. Bye, see you next time. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and with the #LearnwithOak. We'd love to see your brilliant work.

Tennis (Part 1): Introduction

Tennis (Part 1): Introduction

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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