How To Make Swimming Lesson Plans

You can't teach a swimming class without knowing how to make swimming lesson plans. Swimming lesson plans allow you to make good use of your time and the student's time, so that they learn new skills each lesson. Good swimming lesson plans also allow you to show the student's parents or your supervisor the progress students are making in class.

1. Structure the swimming lesson plans to the age group of your students. For instance, plan a number of short activities for a group of preschool students, since they have short attention spans. You may also need to physically show a group of children that young rather than describe skills to them. You can use language and visible demonstration more with a group of older children or adults.
2. Create a list of objectives for each swimming lesson plan. During a class for six-year-olds, an objective may be to swim across the pool using a kickboard or learning to float. An objective for an older group of children may be swimming the breaststroke by the end of the lesson or learning to dive off of the diving board. You should have a list of objectives that you want to accomplish by the end of the entire class session. Each lesson plan should work its way towards accomplishing those objectives.
3. Start each lesson plan with a warm-up period. Have students get used to the water and give them time to stretch. A good exercise may be holding on to the side of the pool and kicking.
4. Breakdown each skill into sections. For instance, to learn the crawl or freestyle, a student first needs to know how to float, how to move her arms and then how to kick. She'lll then learn how to put those skills together.
5. Demonstrate the new skills to students. If they are very young, you may need to take their legs and arms and move them yourself to show how to swim. You can perform the arm or leg movements yourself for an older group.
6. Include games that make use of skills learned during the swim lesson. For children that are learning to float, include a game that tests how long each child can float, either on her stomach or back. Have races for students who are learning to swim laps. Make the games fun and not too competitive.