Delivering the Beginner Experience – Snowboard
Goal of a Beginner Lesson
•The goal of PSIA-AASI is to provide an array of tools to allow the instructor to explore how to deliver a beginner lesson. By sharing your passion for the sport, creating a fun, safe, and exciting experience, you can turn students into lifelong snowboarders.
As we work through the course, we will provide you valuable tools to use when you are creating a progression for your students. While the information we provide is valuable remember that there are several different ways to teach a progression and there is no one right way to go about teaching a beginner. This course is meant to provide you with information on a variety of different ways to get your students moving. Every student is different – sometimes you must spend more time on certain skill or on one task and other times you may skip steps. With the understanding of why we do a task or drill, you will be able to choose which task your students need to develop a skill, keep them safe, and provide an exceptional learning experience.
It is key to work with your home mountain in order to adapt what you have learned in this course to the needs of your resort guests. The length of lessons, type of lesson (group, private, children or adult) the size of hill, and terrain provided in the learning area will affect how you lay out your lesson for each guest. The goal of PSIA-AASI is to provide an array of tools to allow the instructor to explore how to deliver a beginner lesson. During the “On Snow” module within this course, we will introduce you to flat land tactics, sliding and gliding and end with basics on how to turn.
Lesson Expectations verses the Reality
The Teaching/Learning Cycle
•During this module, we will introduce you to the Teaching/Learning cycle. In the “Meeting Your Students” module later in the course, we will go into greater depth on how you as an instructor, will use this model to create a memorable beginner lesson.
•For simplicity’s sake, newer instructors can consider the Teaching/Learning Cycle as a series of steps. This approach creates an orderly flow to the lesson, reducing the decision-making process for newer instructors.
•Rob Sogard explains how the Teaching/Learning Cycle works, and how you can use it to create the best beginner experience.
Children’s Teaching/Learning Cycle
The Teaching/Learning Cycle Broken Down
Welcome and Introduction
•Be professional and greet each student, introduce yourself and have your students meet each other. During this stage you will begin to develop trust and build rapport.
•Don’t forget to invite your students to join the culture of skiing! Provide tips on terminology, the best way to carry equipment, and how to wear goggles helps to develop trust, and make your guests feel welcome into the broader snowsports experience.
Assess the Student
•Before you can build a lesson plan for the day, you need to assess your student’s physical abilities and technical understanding. Warm-up activities will give you an opportunity to see how comfortable your guests are on snow, while building good group rapport. Observe their movements, stance, balance, and agility.
Determine Goals and Plan Experiences
•Ask questions about their goals and motivations for taking a lesson.
•As the lesson progresses, remember to make sure the group goals align with what each student wants to learn and their motivations for taking a lesson.
Create Experience for Learning
•Organize students and the lesson environment by choosing appropriate terrain based on ability and snow conditions. Interact with support, and encourage your students.
Guide Practice
•Guided practice is one of the most important parts of the teaching cycle.
•Create space to spend one-on-one time with each of your students while others practice or explore movements. Repetition of movements anchors the actual learning and sliding experience. Guided practice also lets you handle an ability split. Challenge your more advanced students with difficult tasks while you spend individualized time on guests who may be struggling. This also gives students independence while allowing you individualize the lesson.
Review and Preview
•At the end of the lesson, make sure to review the experience, preview the next lesson, and invite your students back to your school and the sport. The debrief is an opportunity for your students to discuss their progress and the goals they accomplished. This content should come from the student. It is your job to facilitate the debrief and make a link to what another day on snow would do for them.
Introduction to Meeting Students
The Learning Partnership
•Being able to connect, relate, and develop trust with your students has a big impact on the outcome of the lesson. Many factors shape the interaction between teachers and students. PSIA-AASI’s educational approach uses the student profile and the instructor profile to determine the individual characteristics each person brings to the learning environment. These characteristics influence how teachers read and respond to students; and how students respond in return. Together they form what PSIA-AASI calls the Learning Partnership. A collaborative relationship that involves a shared commitment to learning, active participation, mutual respect, and trust.
Working with Children
The Learning Partnership (Student Profile)
•This aspect of the Learning Partnership identifies the non-technical factors each student brings to the learning environment. Although these factors do not change snowboarding mechanics, they may influence the skill development and body movements that become a lesson’s focus.
•Here are the components of the student makeup:
•Personal characteristics and background
•Past experiences
•Attitudes and emotional states
•Learning styles and preferences
•Motivations and goals
•Identity, beliefs, and personal values
•Physical conditioning and health
•Expectations and understanding
•Social factors
The Learning Partnership (Instructor Profile)
•As there are characteristics that make each student unique, certain characteristics make each instructor unique. In the same way the student profile identifies the nature of your students’ attitudes and actions, your own personal background, values and beliefs, goals and motivations, physical conditioning, etc., contribute to your abilities and behaviors as a teacher. As a practice of self-awareness, you should be comfortable identifying these factors as they apply to you. In addition to these personal traits, you also bring a unique skillset as a teacher, leader, and facilitator. Your instructor profile influences your interactions with your students and defines your contribution to the Learning Partnership.
•Here are the components of the instructor profile:
•Sport-scientific knowledge and performance
•Teaching experience and understanding of learning theory
•Resort and snowsports school knowledge
•Preferred social style
Rental Shop
•As an instructor, it is key for you to be aware of the rental shop process so you understand what your students go through as they make their way through the shop. Understanding the fit of your students’ equipment is also key to a great lesson. Many people say the lesson starts in the rental shop, and some schools will actually have instructors meet their students in the shop so they can introduce equipment before moving to the learning area.
•Whether you spend time in the rental shop or meet your students on snow, it is so important to have a strong working relationship with the pros in the shop so that everyone can work together to make sure the guests are set up for success when it comes to their gear.
•Learning Objectives:
•Explain how the proper equipment and fit is vital to students having a fun and exciting experience in their lesson.
•Discuss the importance of having rental shop technicians exchange and alter equipment.
Properly Fitted Equipment
•Proper fitting equipment is essential to a good experience on snow. Remember, the rental shop may be your students very first experience to our sport, so it is essential that you check each of your students for the right gear, and that it all fits properly. It is better go back to the rental shop and get the proper gear than to try and make the wrong equipment work.
Snowboard Boots
•It is important that boots fit properly and are laced tightly to hold the foot in place. Watch the video below on how to ensure your students boots fit properly.
Sizing a Snowboard
•Snowboard length is measured as the straight line distance from tip to the tail of the deck.
•Most rentals have a stance set at 9,-9 or “reference” this works well for most people. Depending on preferences or physical differences, you can bring the board back to the rental shop to have the angles changed. Check your resort’s policy before adjusting bindings yourself.
Fitting a Helmet
Leaving the Adjustments to the Pros
•As your students leave the rental shop you will want to ensure they have all of their equipment and it fits properly. Remember to adhere to your home mountain’s policy for adjusting gear.
Carrying Your Board
•Little things like showing your student how to carry their board, helps welcome them into snowboard culture and help them feel a part of our sport.
How Do Your Students Ride, Goofy versus Regular?
•Try to find commonalities to other sports they may do or have tried. Any experience with Skateboarding, surfing and rip sticking are all good ways to find out left or right foot forward, and also gain good information on relating things later on in the lesson. If they haven’t had any experience trying those, ask if they have scootered, or slid on the floor with slippery socks. You can even have them take a few steps and pretend they are doing it on the snow.
•As we stated earlier, there is no perfect answer, whichever way your student feels more comfortable with is which way they should try.
•If your student feels the desire to test out the other direction than they first picked, it is OK to let them try to see if it is more comfortable
Understanding the Parts of a Board
•Once everyone has been fitted for boots, snowboards and helmets you will need to educate your students on the various parts of the snowboard.
•If you haven’t met your student in the rental shop, chances are you will probably meet them in a group area out on snow. In the next module, we will start to bring the learning partnership and teaching/learning cycle to life.
Meeting Your Students
Meeting Your Students
Communication
•When meeting your students for the first time, what you say is just as important as how you say it. We communicate both verbally and non-verbally. Interacting through body language can give your students perceptions about your mood, your level of alertness, your willingness to participate, and many more factors before you even speak a word. Body language includes posture, hand gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact. Typically, these actions complement the language of the speaker. Using body language can be purposeful to reinforce what’s being said, or it can be unconscious and unintentional.
•Posture – How people stand can reveal their attitudes. A relaxed stance can indicate a person is friendly, open to conversation, and willing to listen. Stand and face your students when first meeting them. If your students are young children, get down on either one or both knees to establish a friendly eye level with them.
•Hand Gestures – Hand gestures serve many purposes. Waving, offering a “thumbs up,” and raising hands to signal backing off are examples of symbolic gestures that represent common actions. Handshakes are formal and professional. High fives are informal and casual. Make certain that your hand gestures create a friendly and welcoming environment.
•Facial Expressions and eye contact – Facial expressions are clearly visible and immediately informative about people’s reactions. Making eye contact show’s you are interested and engaged. Smiling is easy and will make everyone’s day better! Raise your goggles and pull down your face masks or neck gaiters to let your students see your face, smile and sincerity.
•In summary, when you’re skilled at both verbal and nonverbal communication, you’re more likely to earn the trust of other people. They will tend to look toward you for expertise and approach you in conversation because they like you. Interactions base on strong interpersonal skills lead to meaningful relationships and will make teaching snowboarding much easier for you!
The First 5-10 Minutes
•Sometimes all of your students will all arrive at the same exact time but, other times, your students will show up over the course of 5-10 minutes. Here are some tactics to start your lesson efficiently and engage your entire group.
•Find your own space – Gather all of your students assigned to you and find your own space away from the lesson meeting point and make sure your supervisor knows where to find your group.
•Group up – Circle up with your group making everyone feel welcome. Introduce yourself and have group get to know each other.
•Get on their level –If you’re working with adult students, “walk and talk” with them as you move to your group spot. If you’re working with young children, a game or challenge activity might be good for moving your group. No matter what, engage your students on their level
•Goggles up and face masks down – Make sure your students can see and hear you. Connect with them and let them see your face.
•Do an equipment check while introducing the gear – Equipment can set up and make a successful lesson. As you check equipment, you can make an informational game out of it, explaining how everything works. Check that boots are tied tightly and emphasize this importance for better performance and ease of learning. Discuss clothing and wearing layers, explaining that it’s important to regulate temperature whether hot or cold. Your students comfort level is key to learning environment.
Finding Your Own Space
•Gather all of the students assigned to you and find your own space. Your space can be 5, 10, or maybe even 50 or 100 feet from where you first met. Make sure that the person(s) in charge of assigning lessons knows where you are and can see you easily, but finding your own space will create a natural point where your students will feel like everything is finally starting. If you already have a snowboard on your feet and your students do not, make sure to take your board off and walk with your students.
Group Up
•Circle up with your group so that everyone can feel like part of the group. Make sure that no one is left outside of the circle so that everyone feels like they belong to the group.
Get On Their Level
•If you’re working with adult students, “walk and talk” with them as you move to your group spot. If you’re working with young children, it might need to be a game or challenge activity as you move to your group spot. Once you get to your spot, it’s a great strategy to get down on either one or both of your knees so that you are on an even height with younger/shorter students.
Googles Up and Face Mask Down
•Make sure your students can see and hear you. Connect with them and let them see your face.
Do an Equipment Check
•This is a great time to check students’ equipment to make sure everything is set up for a successful lesson. As you check equipment, you can make an informational game of it. Explain the “why” behind equipment fit to all of your students so that they know what to check for the next time they come back. As you check if boots are tied, explain that boots that are tied tightly will give them better control and precision when they start sliding. As you check that they are wearing layers, explain that they can let you know if they start to get too hot so that you can help them shed and store a layer.
Introduce Gear
•Start this process towards the end of the first 5-10 minutes so that any late additions to your group do not feel “in the dark”. Make sure that you are letting your students touch and play with their own gear during the introduction phase so that they feel actively involved in the learning.
Ensuring Your Student is Dressed for Success
Lesson Splits
•Now that you have learned about making a great first impression while starting to build rapport, we will walk you through how to handle a group split. As you have been getting to know your students you will begin to understand their needs and goals, and ability levels. While you are learning about their current abilities you can start to discuss other hobbies that your students enjoy and if they have ever experienced the sensation of sliding.
•Ideally, students should be in the correct group for their age, ability, desired outcome, and other factors that might affect their participation with other students. People at your resort that are in charge of assigning lessons will do their best to create appropriate groups, however, sometimes a student will slip through the cracks and end up in the wrong lesson. Most resorts have procedures for how to handle if a student ends up in the wrong group, but the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that students are paired with similar interests and abilities ultimately falls on the instructor. It is important to be sensitive in these instances, and remember that even though this guest may not remain you’re student, how you handle helping them get into the right group has an effect on their overall experience. It is equally important to remember this if a student joins you a few minutes late. It is not fun for a student to be tossed around from group to group, make sure to take an extra second to welcome them into the group and develop a connection.
Handling a Split
Verbal Split
•For many beginner lessons, just ask “How many of you have ever been snowboarding before?” Most will say never or it has been a few years. Asking questions, helps determine groups. Try asking “how many of you would consider yourselves very athletic?” or “how many of you would like to take a slower pace?” Asking questions like these can help to define groups of similar skill levels and goals. It is called a verbal split because we are only asking questions.
Visual Split
•As you get to know your students, you will watch and assess your students movements, try creating a game to see how they move while you are waiting to start the lesson, who looks comfortable walking in snowboard boots, standing on one leg, and hopping from side to side? Start grouping people with similar movements (e.g. those comfortable walking in snowboard boots and those figuring it out).
Ability Split
•When using ability level to split your student’s into groups you might ask them to do a movement assessment to make sure the groups fit together. Ski and Snowboard Schools will have unique assessment procedures based on your resort and the length of the lesson, terrain, volume of students, and other factors. The key to initial assessment is to help make sure the group can snowboard safely together and that no one in the group will either be either held back or pushed too hard.
Introduction to On Snow
Attaching a Snowboard
•The first step to a great lesson is covering how to put on gear. Start by asking your students to strap into their snowboard with one foot. In the video below, we show you how simple it is for your students to strap into their snowboard.
Learning To Move
•As you get your students moving on snow, we can teach them how to tilt, twist, pivot, and bend the snowboard by using flexion, extension, and rotation of the muscles, joints, and bones of the body. We can use movements to intentionally manipulate the snowboard and/or use these movements to help us balance on top of the snowboard as it moves – both tactics can help us increase our control and fun factors. While your students begin to move, it is also important to remind them to keep it safe.
On Snow One-Footed Activities
•This is where your students will become familiar with the sliding movement of the snowboard in a controlled environment.
Skating
•To begin skating, have your students step forward with the trailing foot, so that it is directly behind the front foot and planted on the snow. Gently push the board in the direction of the nose, as shown by Amy in the video below.
•Now these were considerations for adults, when teaching young children how to skate, it’s important to give them plenty of practice time. Practice skating by playing a game of freeze tag where everyone keeps one foot strapped in. If they are tagged by the snowboarder that is “it”, they have to stay frozen until another rider skates a full circle around them to unfreeze them. Skating freeze tag will keep your students having fun and learning how to skate by moving.
Straight Glides
•Next, we are teaching our students how to glide. Gliding is how we slide with one foot in and one foot out with a slight downhill pitch. For the glide, we will take our back foot and step onto the snowboard between the bindings as we let the snowboard slide forward. Now watch the video below to hear Amy and Brennan provide advice on how they use the straight glide in their beginner lessons.
•For teaching children how to straight glide, it’s important to make it fun. Hold a piece of bamboo as a limbo pole that your students need to duck under while performing their straight glides. Build small snowballs that they need to jump onto and crush during their straight glide. Getting them moving up and down while sliding will help to build crucial balance skills.
•When using more of the mountain to teach young children to ride, it’s a good habit to always ask three questions before you move to new terrain:
1.Where are we going? – Define a specific target point that you’re aiming for.
2.How do we stop? – It’s a great habit to always ask your students to tell you or show you what they need to do to stop.
3.What to do if you get out of control or get scared? – Talk about the safest way to fall/sit down so that it’s fresh on your students’ minds if they need to bail out.
•Asking these 3 questions every time before you move will help to reinforce the basic components that your students need to stay safe and get moving.
Standing Up
•Standing up is often the most difficult thing that a student will do in their first lesson. Try out a bunch of different ways to stand up until you find one that works for your student(s). Celebrate the success of the first time a student stands up without assistance. This is a major accomplishment and is a gateway into them becoming a snowboarder.
Turning With One-Foot
On this page you will find tactics to teach your students how to turn with one foot strapped in. We will start with a J turn, watch how you can teach your students this tactic both on their heel side and their toe side.
Heelside J Turn
Toeside J Turn
•When teaching children to do J turns, tell them to imagine squishing bugs under their toes or under their heels. This will simplify the movements for them and help them to achieve more success. If your students start to flat spin in circles as they are trying out their first few J turns, pay attention to where they are looking. Often when a student looks down at their feet during a J turn, it will cause them to shift their center of mass just enough that it starts them into a flat spin. Remedy this by having them keep their eyes up and looking where they want to go.
Two-Footed Riding Tasks
•Here our objective is to teach the student to balance on one edge at a time, get from point A to point B while both feet are strapped in, use both edges and to be able to stop.
Sideslipping
•For Children: When teaching kids to sideslip, encourage them to maintain equal weight on both feet, hold their head up, and keep their arms out and away from the torso.
Falling Leaf
Traverse
•When you have multiple students all learning to traverse at the same time, it’s easy to get lazy as the instructor and start walking and skating around to help everyone. Remember that it’s extremely important to provide visually accurate demonstrations for your students while you are traversing with both feet strapped in. If a student learns by watching, they will need to see what it looks like. Anytime you are demonstrating what it should look like, you should be strapped in just like your students.
For Children
•The first time both feet are strapped in can be awkward for many kids. Familiarizing them with these new sensations on flat terrain can help them succeed before moving onto a more gradual slope. Have them strap in both feet while standing up, and offer to help if needed. Once they are strapped, in have students rock on the tip and tail like a plastic army toy. You can also have them hop in place, performing two-footed hops.
•On flatter terrain kids can take advantage of a skidded traverse and falling leaf to facilitate less defensive riding. Be creative with your explanations for these exercises. Here are some examples:
•Pretend you are a leaf floating out of the sky!
•Use the board to erase marks in the snow.
•Use the board to paint a line in the snow as you go across the hill.
Two-Footed Directional Riding
•Our goal with these tactics is to teach the student how to steer their board into and out of the fall line, and be able to change edges in the fall line.
Linking Turns
•Lets get your students moving down hill. After watching the video below we will cover tactics for two-footed riding tasks that you can teach your students so they can start riding!
Garland
•When teaching young kids how to make garlands and complete their first C Turns, they might not have well developed full range of motion in their ankles and knees. You might need to encourage them to lean with their upper body to help them flatten their snowboards and eventually to help change edges. Young kids often move more as a whole body instead of having advanced function in the ankle and knee joints.
C-Turns
Snowball Smash
•To round out the two footed activities and get your students progressing to a two-footed directional riding tactic, we have a fun game for you to use with your students called the snowball smash! This game is a floating leaf/falling leaf exercise that you can have your students do to practice. In order to effectively play this game your students need to know and understand the falling leaf.
Riding The Lift
•It is your responsibility to adhere to your resorts lift policies. In the two videos below we will provide you with a few guidelines you can teach your students on how to safely load, unload and ride a lift. As you work through the Teaching/Learning Cycle and assess the student, it is important to determine whether your student knows how to ride a lift. You should never assume they know how to load, but instead walk them through the process.
Loading Onto The Chairlift
Unloading The Chairlift
Wrap Up and Closing
Review The Experience
• An important part of the lesson is to recap their learning experience. Reviewing the sights, sounds, and sensations of the day can reconnect students with the emotions from a great run or a lesson learned. Clarifying any last-minute questions or concerns helps students feel confident in their ability to ski or ride on their own without “losing” what they’ve gained.
Preview the Next Experience
•So what’s next? The end of a lesson is the perfect time to set your students up for future adventures. It can be difficult to think about the future when current learning is not yet complete, but it can also be a great motivator to build upon each experience and identify opportunities and for new adventures. Inviting your students to return for another lesson can lead to lasting friendships, strengthen the learning partnership, and create lifelong riders.
For Children:
•A good way to remind children in your lesson on how far they’ve progressed, is to ask them very open ended questions and have them both tell you the answers and show you the answers. Examples include:
1.“How do we stop?” – Have your students show you the moves needed to stop while also describing what they’re doing. This will help them create cause and effect connections.
2.“How do we start our J turns?” – Have your students show you the moves needed to stop while also describing what they’re doing. This will help them create cause and effect connections.
•Once you meet up with your students parent/guardian, have your students show and explain the “answers” to these questions to them. You can be the translator so that the parent/guardian have some understanding of what to continue to reinforce with your students if they are out on the mountain together. Explain to the parent/guardian good terrain options for continued practice. This is a crucial step for not ruining the progress your students made during the lesson, as riding terrain that is too challenging can cause regression in their riding.
•For additional in depth information on how to review and preview the lesson click on the buttons below.
Review the Lesson
•Have students review their performance. It’s an all too common practice for teachers to recap lessons for their students. A much more effective tactic is for teachers to engage students in a discussion about their experience and their day. Have them reflect on a success they had that highlights what they have learned. For example, “Remember how well you controlled your speed on that steeper run? What did you do differently?”
Review Goals and Progress
•Review the goal-setting process. Have your students recall their big-picture goal as well as any mini-goals or objectives you agreed upon to help them reach their goal. How far did they get? What were their successes and struggles? Make sure you encourage students to revisit their goals and appreciate how their performance has changed, and describe any new sensations or outcomes.
Make a Plan for Practice
•Agree on a plan for independent practice: How repeatable or consistent is your student’s performance? The answer to this question will help you prepare your students to continue to learn after the lesson. Perhaps they’ve only had a few successful turns, or maybe they’re consistently performing at a new level. They may even be beginning to transfer new skills to other outcomes, terrain, or snow conditions. Help your students choose appropriate terrain and tactics to practice their riding for continued learning until you meet again.
Build Upon New Learning
•The amazing thing about learning is that it builds upon itself. Each change in understanding or performance creates a new perspective and opens new possibilities. Re-assess potential and performance. Revisit goals and plan new adventure.
Invite Them Back
•An invitation to take another lesson is a polite way to wrap up the learning experience. More important, it’s an invitation to continue the Learning Partnership, and work together to solve new challenges along the way to becoming better riders.
Summary
•Skiing and riding is an action sport… It’s about getting outside and moving around the mountain. As you work through this course, the things to focus on are how to accomplish the goals of getting your students moving while also: keeping them safe, getting them to trust you, and finding solutions to the problems that they are struggling with. Being an instructor is all about being a problem solver. We try to discover what our students are able to do based on their actions and words, and we attempt to make the learning curve of getting better at snowboarding and becoming more mobile around the mountain as easy as possible. This is done by finding solutions to the snowboarding problems that our students are facing. It’s okay to try new things. You shouldn’t be copying and pasting the same exact lesson every single time you are out with new students. Get to know your students, ask them questions, smile, laugh, play silly games, come up with analogies that relate to your students’ lives that also help explain what you want them to do on their snowboard, and most of all HAVE FUN! Treat every opportunity to teach a student as an opportunity to get them to fall in love with this crazy sport that we all love. If you pay attention to keeping your students safe, having fun with them, and developing a trust between you and them, I guarantee that you’re doing it right. If you focus on safety, fun, and trust; a learning connection is going to happen and your students will get better at skiing and riding!
