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What is a carousel approach?

A carousel approach is one where learners experience a variety of activities within one session, and move round from one activity to another swiftly and easily. A typical carousel session in football or school PE may involve several activities being set-up, and pairs or small groups of children moving around these. This could be managed by having a set amount of time on each activity, or less usually by giving children the choice of which activity they want to go on.

However, the learners don't necessarily need to be split into smaller groups in order for it to be a carousel approach; The England DNA approach to carousels seems to imply that a larger group of players be taken together through a set of activities. There is a stress in the England DNA documentation that the next activity be set-up before the previous one finished - thus not wasting valuable session time. If you think about a carousel at the fairground, the horses need to continue rotating without stopping.

Advantages of this approach

• Maximises learning time. Because activities are organised beforehand, there is no wasted time. Groups or pairs can move from one activity to another quickly and efficiently.
• Provides variety. Children stay motivated, interested and keen.
• Gives choice. In some carousels, it may be appropriate for children to choose which station or activity to go on. They can also be encouraged to choose how to use equipment (e.g. change area size, or amend task).
• Allows competition. Beat own score, beat previous groups score, beat partner.
• Enhances learning. Allows for easy grouping of children according to ability. Child-centred approach frees teacher or coach of organisational role during session so they can actually teach individuals within the activity. 

Examples of carousel sessions...

Agility, balance and co-ordination carousel for pairs of young footballers

In this carousel, children need to be fairly able with a ball. We use this kind of carousel at MoF, usually on half-term weekends when we may have smaller group sizes and might join two groups together. We therefore have a mixed-ability group with a large ability gap. By pairing children of roughly equal ability, we can give all children someone to work with who is about the same level. This helps everyone achieve at their level. We often add in a 1v1 station (e.g. panna or line ball) and sometimes a 2v2 small game station also - just to add some games and variety.

A 'shooting' carousel for individual football children

A 3v3 invasion games carousel for small groups in KS2 PE

The PE KS2 curriculum does not state which games children should learn, so there is no need to plan a school programme based on specific sports (e.g. Term 1 = Netball and Cricket). Rather, the curriculum lends itself to a skill-based programme. For example, in one half-term a class might examine 'Attacking Tactics in Invasion Games' and use lots of different games to study and learn about attacking. The kind of carousel above can be used for children to move round, playing against different teams in different invasion games. The exact attacking tactics used will be different in the different sports because of the restrictions and freedoms in the rules (e.g. you can't pass forward in rugby, or you can't travel with the ball in netball). Children love the variety of a lesson like this, and it can be a very useful way to explore attacking concepts such as Creating Space to Attack, Breaking Through a Defence, Combining with a Partner to Score, etc.

A football skills carousel for individual children

The video below shows a carousel we put together for a Holiday Programme we ran a few summers ago. It rained heavily all day, so we quickly put together seven activities for the children to play on. Small groups, grouped by ability, went round the stations, and later we turned the activity into a competition with coaches scoring children.