For New Zealand system, before proceeding to Level 3, it is mandatory to have the children teaching module.
Every level of New Zealand system, there are hard skills (technical riding skills ) and soft skills ( personal skills = human connection). Typically the hard skill is a certain manoeuvre, for example one of the level 1 required hard skill is to perform clear Ollie’s. The soft skills are developed depending on the certification level 1,2,3 or modules (park or children) Understanding both hard and soft skills and incorporating both into lessons are very important.
Adam and I, both of us attended the children’s module.
As hard skills are just the riding skills, which is very simple to grasp the concept, let’s talk more about soft skills specifically applied to children’s module.
Starting with the interview process, we defined the preferred learning styles. ( in New Zealand system, the break down into 8 learning styles : See photo)
Then we determined how to communicate and structure lesson efficiently with children catered to their preferred learning styles (multiple intelligences)
Each of us got assigned role of instructor and student, student got a Q-card about what is their learning style and instructor had to find out student’s learning style through questions.
After identifying learning style of the assigned student, instructors come up with lessons that will work the best for the each type of learners and present them to the assigned students.
Generally speaking, a person’s learning style cannot be the only one, can be combinations of different styles, in that case instructors will adapt lessons plan to cater a few different learning styles. In Today’s session to make it simple we only dealt with one typical learning style.
Thank you for reading
Adam and Yuki