I.am.a total student of Breakthrough Basketball. That being said, I am curious as to what your first practice would look like for a 3rd and 4th grade rec team.

Thank you for any and all advice.

Ray

Here are a couple practice plans to give you ideas:
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/haefner/category/3rd-grade-basketball/

With a rec team you might need to simplify. We'd do dribbling, passing, pivoting, and maybe lay ups. Then we'd play 1v1 to learn dribbling skills and how to defend. Might also play 5v0 pass and cut. And shell drill if we have time.

This is pretty much what the first few practices will look like.



1) Write out your practice plans and have a few extra drills at the bottom in case you get stuck.

2) Write estimated times next to each activity (e.g., 7:00-7:05 introductions, 7:05-7:10 layup drll, etc..). I just use this as a loose guide to help keep me on track. If a drill is rockin, I keep going with it. However, it's easy to find yourself only covering a few concepts in a 1 hour practice.

3) The more activity, the better. Young kids aren't real fond of standing around or in lines for too long.

4) Keep it fun. Crazy name for a drill or have a competition where the losers have to bark like dogs, things like that.

5) Lots of praise. Catch them doing things right and make a big deal out of it.

Let us know how it goes.

Here's a recommended training progression (order to teach things):

Dribbling
Pivoting
Passing
Layups and finishing
Shooting
On ball defense (1v1)
Transition offense (could optionally be moved after rebounding.. depending on age level and time constraints)
Motion offense
Man to man defense (team)
Rebounding (if you have time)
Under the basket inbounds plays (keep it very simple at first)
Press breaker (wait until they get older if possible)
Under the basket inbounds defense (if you have time... probably wait until they get older)

So start the first practice with dribbling, pivoting and passing skills. The incorporate some small sided games to practice those skills. You can find ideas here:
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/dribbling-drills.html
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/footwork-drills.html
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/drills/passing-drills.html

You won't get too far during that first practice. So if you get through everything above, you could start working on some basic on ball defense and/or basic cutting or spacing for your motion offense.

With 3rd graders, focus mostly on basic skills, basic man to man defense, simple motion offense,