I am coaching 3/4 grade boys and I was wondering if anybody wanted to weigh in on my thought process regarding my defensive coaching plan.

Practices are 1 hour. We have had two practices so far, and almost all of that time I have spent on teaching passing, dribbling, pivot footwork and shooting layups. (lots of dribbling and layups) I don't know when our first game is yet, but I plan to continue the heavy focus on offensive skills. At some point I will go over offensive spacing, layout the 5 spots for our open post, pass and cut offense, and run them through it on air a little bit.

I plan to focus heavily on one on one, man to man defense. We will do a lot of one on one drills. Focusing on footwork, beating your man to the spot, etc. I am giving slight thought to incorporating some ball denial drills into this, where a coach has the ball at the point and the defender must deny a pass to the offense on the wing. Maybe even having the coach dribble to the opposite wing and teaching the defender to see man, see ball and point the pistols.

WOuld you start off the ball defense earlier?

I always told my teams this.... GOOD defense starts with good on the ball defense..... better defensive teams play good defense one pass away... but the GREAT defensive teams play excellent help side D. ( 2 passes away )

You can show them this with a simple 3 on 3 drill ( just passing )
1 player at the point and 1 player covering each wing..... (top of key and wing positions)
1 pressures the ball 2&3 are in denial... as the ball is passed to a wing, the opposite wing defender jumps to the help line seeing man and ball... use pistols / pointing at both..... then you reverse the ball back to the top... the wing defenders go to a denial position and then the ball goes to the other wing and the opposite wing defender jumps to the help side.

This might be an early age to teach denial of the wings, you can always use the pack style and run the same drill.... I hope my explanation was clear enough..... good luck.