Lesson Plans: Weekly, Repeatable, & SkillSheets

Switch your hammer for a kick board; add more tools to your swimming toolbox

Many different tools for better swimming.

Not every swim lesson skill can be fixed with a hammer.

Have you heard the old adage, “If the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like nail?” You can’t solve every problem using a single tool. You need a toolbox at your disposal; something with lots of pockets and a diverse range of solutions. Swimming Ideas offers three distinct types of lesson plans that prepare you and your staff for better swimming success.

Weekly Lesson Plans: teach the same level with different activities and challenges over four weeks

Repeatable Lesson Plans: for a single plan that works per level over and over

SkillSheets: single skill reference sheets for swimmers and instructors to focus on a single skill’s progression

Take a look at examples of each type of lesson plan and see how it can help your swimming instruction!

Using someone else’s lesson plan can be frustrating and difficult if you’re not familiar with the framework or premise that it’s created on.

My goal is to empower other people to teach awesome swimming. Whether that is in swimming lessons with 3-year-olds or more advanced Developmental Swim Team groups.

I want to see people having fun but also being productive.

Hence, Fun and Effective swimming.

There are three types of lesson plans we’ll review here:

• Weekly lesson plans
  • Teaching the same level of swimmers week after week. These will take you through a progression of skills in a Level.
  • Will be variations in lesson plans with expectation that instructors will learn the cycle and build a bank of activities and challenges so they can iterate on their own after gaining mastery.
  • Will cover all possible skills in a Level.

• Repeatable Lesson Plans
  • Intended as a broad framework for a Level or class that can serve as a basis or scaffolding to start with. Will cover all testable skills and provide the basics of a Level.
  • The goal is to use them every week the same. Activities and Challenges focus on the most crucial, essential skills only.

• SkillSheets
  • Guides on how to teach core swimming skills like Breaststroke Arms, Butterfly, or the flip turns.
  • Includes progressions and drills that are specific to that skill.
  • Useful as a supplement or addition to a lesson plan
  • Useful as a training document.
  • Useful as a reference for both swimmers and instructors.

Weekly Lesson Plans

Swimming Ideas offers weekly lesson plans for the following levels:

• Parent Tot
• Level 1
• Level 2
• Level 3
• Level 4
• Developmental Swim Practice: over 500 freely available here: https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/blog/category/practice/

Let’s look at Level 1 Weekly lesson plan found in the first Free Download topic

• Small changes based on Day
• Can be done over and over, but intended to go from Day 1 to Day 4
• Intended to be a framework; a baseline so that you can iterate or build on it with your variations
• Following the weekly plans will introduce many different activities and challenges
• Can be done over and over; Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

This will look very familiar. Our lesson plans are intended to be simple and straightforward.

• Left to right
• Activity, Activity, Challenge
• Repeat

Instructors should be able to pick up a lesson plan and look at it quickly without too much time spent reading it in the moment.

The weekly lesson plans will take both instructors and swimmers through a robust progression of skills and games that prepare them to succeed at that listed level.

We want swimmers to progress.

Swimmers improve by doing things well, and doing them over and over.

So while there is some variation to the activities and challenges, there is significant repetition.

Over the course of 4 days of lessons in the same level the activities will change slightly, the order may be different, or the daily focus may change from Front Crawl to Back Crawl.

Let’s look at Level 3’s repeatable lesson plan available to subscribers

• Can be done over and over
• Intended to be a framework; a baseline so that you can iterate or build on it with your variations
• Focus on the core testable skills for the level

Like all our lesson plans the repeatable lesson plan follows the Activity, Activity, Challenge formula. Read from Left to Right and notice the progression of skills with a related challenge.

Here, we start with a familiar Level 2 skill: streamline. Then, we’ll layer in another familiar Level 2 skill: Streamline and then without a breath do three front crawl arms.

It is worth doing these skills in Level 3 because we can always refine and improve our adherence to these core essential things. We want swimmers to do excellent streamlines and excellent front crawl arms.

The coach or instructor should be giving actionable and effective feedback. We want those three freestyle strokes to be done with deliberate care and attention. The swimmers should start and finish in Position 11 and the body should be held in a straight controlled line.

Every activity in a repeatable plan is a core skill; a skill or component of one of the four competitive strokes that forms the foundation of that stroke over the long term.

Activities in the Repeatable plans are those 20% of activities and things that address 80% or more of the level’s testable skills.

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Here is a SkillSheet

• Shows a progression, or how to start, and where you’re going
• Focuses on a specific swimming skill
• Displays each step to mastering skill and provides a specific Actvity, Activity, Challenge formula for the skill on the back

SwimSheets are awesome supplemental tools to help you teach a complex skill better. Maybe you’ve read through the online training or the Teaching Swimming workbook. What isn’t included is the specific progressions that we use to teach those complex skills.

From the above picture you can see how we illustrate what Front Crawl arms should taught. Start with position 11, then do wide straight elbow arm circles. As mastery improves (going left to right) teach the high elbow recovery.

And how do you do those activities? Use short distances (with examples) and multiple repetitions: 3x SL + 3 FREE, or 6x SL + Front crawl arms to the bench.

Yes, breathing is deliberately left out. Why? We remove breathing so that swimmers can focus on the placement and quality of their kicks, arm strokes, and body position. Limit distance to allow for a comfortable swim without the stress and anxiety of breathing (which often disrupts swimming technique).

Do you want to use all of these Lesson Plans? You can when you subscribe to All-Access!