Getting Started with the Seconds Pro App
Okay, let’s get started with the Seconds Pro app. This app I utilize on my iPhone or my iPad and what’s great about it is as a to customize your timers and not only with the music and the time that you want to spend on each station, but also what it will say for you. So what I like to do is I like to create my own custom timer, and I named the activity after the activity that I’m doing, whether it’s Volleyball, Spikeball, Pickleball. So for example, here I have my cone ball timer in front of me and I’ve had an estimate of like 10 sets. Let’s say. Just so that I have enough time on the timer for lots of gameplay and it’s not gonna end too early and it has you list exercises.
Rotating Through Small-Sided Games
Well instead of listing exercises, I really just want to start the game and so what I do is I literally just type in “Start game” as the name of my exercise, and I only need one exercise listed and I have three to four minute games. At the end of the game then it has “Rest between sets” as an option. And so what I’ll do is I’ll put in a one minute rest in between sets and when you click on that in the app it also lets you customize the name of your rest interval. So here I put “Shake hands and rotate”. And so what you have once you start the app is you have “Start game” and then it plays for about three minutes with music. And then once that interval is done it says “Shake hands and rotate” and it gives about a one minute break for my students.
Simplify Teaching with Music and Apps
After that it says start game again because it goes right back and repeats that interval. So what’s super cool about this is that I don’t have to worry about blowing the whistle, losing my voice, saying shake hands and rotate or even just rotate. I teach the kids where they’re going, how they’re rotating, whether I’m using a bracket or just an automatic up-down rotation, and I have time to meet with teams. I have time to have the students have strategy sessions, get a quick drink, have a break as they’re rotating. And I’m also emphasizing that sportsmanship, I really want them to say good game, to shake hands and then rotate so that we have that socially-emotional learning and taking responsibility and being a good sport. So if you want a new way to help rotate your students during game play, I really suggest the Seconds Pro app and customizing it for you. I hope you found this useful, and I can’t wait to hear how you like to use the Seconds Pro app. Thanks for listening. Thanks for teaching and have a wonderful day.
