Professional Portfolio

Here is the link to my professional portfolio.  Please feel free to take a look!

The best moment in movement

Best moment in movement on Prezi

It's Christmas Time at St. Mary's

This was my final lab at St. Mary's this year.  For this lab I worked with the Pre-K students again.  We started out outside again running around the playground.  We were playing tag, hide and seek, hot lava with alligators, as well as sliding down the slide.  As they children were sliding down the slide, we were giving them high fives.  They absolutely loved the high fives.  At first they were not really enthused to slide down the slide.  After the high fives started flying the children absolutely loved flying down the slide.  Later on in the afternoon we had more and more students sliding down the slide slapping hive fives with everyone.  When we went inside I led my snowball challenge game.  This game had two teams on opposite sides of a 'fence' and the children had to throw the 'snowballs' to the side.  The winning team won stickers to decorate the ornaments that we brought in for the craft.  There was a few students that did not want to participate, but for the most part they seemed very excited to play.  They did a great job throwing the balls over the mat.  Some of them were using the T technique to throw, while we had to help others use the technique.  Overall this was a very great experience for me to gain experience teaching.   I learned a lot from this that I can use when I become a teacher myself.  This experience showed me what teaching in an elementary school is really like.  I am very thankful for this opportunity and I look forward to being a teacher assistant next semester.

Ice Skating Stop

From the skating lesson i learned 3 different ways to stop.  The are the snowplow stop, the hockey stop, and dragging your back foot at a 90 degree angle behind you other foot.

Swim lesson

These are the answers to the swim class we had last week.

Zumba

Lab D was my final teaching lab for 255.  This lab was very exciting for me to teach because I was teaching something that I was not very familiar with, Zumba.  Zumba is a type of dance that is the latest fitness craze that is swiping the nation.  It brings in Latin dance rhythms and creating a dance routine.  I really enjoyed teaching this lab because it challenged me in a whole new way.  Not only was it challenging because of the lack of dance skills that I have, but I taught a new teaching style as well.  I was able to use the practice teaching technique for this lab.  I felt for my first ever experience using practice teaching went very well.  From here it will only get better.  I felt my strong points of the lesson was demonstrations, and keeping the class under control for the most part, even though Sarah did a backflip that I did not catch.  I feel that demonstrations are my strong point because I use multiple view and also have students come up and demonstrate them for the class as well.  I feel that I need more practice on giving congruent feedback.  I did hear my self give a lot of general feedback, just saying nice job or way to go, but I felt I did not give enough congruent feedback to the class that pertained to what they were doing.  I also felt very comfortable teaching this lesson even though I had very little experience with Zumba in the past.  Also I brought in a different aspect in how I used technology.  In this lesson I wanted my students to get a hands on experience working with technology in a physical education setting.  I created a blog for the class and asked them to answer some assignments and post about what they learned in the class.  I feel that intergrading this is important especially for the future and what it might hold.  In the future I feel that technology will have an even bigger presence in the physical education world.  It is good to have your students be familiar with technology and how it can be incorporated into the class setting.  Overall I feel that as the year went on I am getting stronger aspects as a teacher.  I am using a wider variety of strategies such as incorporating instant activities, having experience teaching in more than one technique, and also stepping outside of my comfort zone to teach different topics and lessons.  This is a really great class and I have learned so much so fast to better myself as a teacher.  I can not wait to see what lies in the future that I can use to become a better teacher, and I look forward to bettering my skills and becoming the best teacher that I can possibly be.  I want to keep challenging myself as much as I can, because that is the only way to can better yourself and succeed at a high level, challenging yourself and keep striving to reach your goals.        

 

Thanksgiving at St. Mary's

Monday's lab I was in the group who led the main activities.  I taught Turkey Soup.  It was a soccer type game where all the 'ingredenents' were placed in the middle of the gymnasium and bring it back to the 'pot' by kicking the balls into the goal.  I was able to keeps the kids attention very well this week because I kept my instructions short, so I would not lose them and their attention.  It was very fun even though only 5 students participated at first.  The students that participated seemed very excited to play and loved the game.  When I was asking some of the students who were not participating in the game one student said he did not want to play my game.  After the gymnasium was done we went down to the cafeteria.  I was playing mancala with Tim, and after I played store with Suzy.  They were very happy to have us students their playing with them and they loved every minute of it.  Back up in the gym I played tag with Joey, and Billy.  They were having a riot trying to tag me and have me be it.  It was a lot of fun today.  I look forward to the last lab at St. Mary's.  Even though it is the last lab that we will have their, it was a great experience where I learned a lot about teaching to the elementary aged school kids.  They are so excited to see us every time we go, and every week they tire you out because you are playing with them and chasing them around the gym.  

Second pre lab

Here is a second pre lab video where I am working on how my lesson will be planned out.

Pre lab for 255

Here is one of my pre lab works for lab d.  I am teaching Zumba and I am going over what I am going to teach and how I am going to do it.

The Creep- The Jumping Jack and Jills

Halloween at St. Mary's

Halloween at St. Mary's was a blast.  The children were all wound up because of the holiday and they were all looking forward to going trick or treating.  It was very difficult to keep them under control while teaching them the game that I created.  We started out playing tag outside on the playground.  I was dressed up in a banana costume and all the kids tried ripping my top off chasing me.  When we came back inside it was a little difficult to keep the kids attention while explaining my game of ghost and goblins with them.  They were very wild, excited, and just wanted to run around.  I thought my game went very well even though it was difficult to explain my game to them due to their excitement.  It was very enjoyable seeing the children excited see everyone dressed up for Halloween, you feel a better connection to the students that way.  It also shows that you are making an effort in trying to relate to them.  After I was done teaching was went to Hula Hoop with Freddy.  He was very good at it, much better than me I must say.  He was tell ing me that a pre-k student taught him how to do it, by swinging your hips forward and backwards.  He was teaching me how to do it.  Also he was telling me how he was trying to catch a ball and throw it back while hula-hooping for the talent show that was coming up.  This was another successful lab and I look forward to leading games next time for Thanksgiving.

Teaching the sport of cricket

Cricket, the national sport of England and originated during the mid 1500's.  The art of pitching in cricket is called bowling, and I taught this last week to the class.  Technology was brought in and used to assist me in teaching the art of bowling to my class.  Using technology in the classroom was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  It helped me out greatly because it gave the students another perspective on the technique of bowling, more than what I could have showed them myself.

We had ten minutes to teach and it went much smoother than I anticipated.  This teaching lab I brought in and used my visual aids to help me teach the important cues.  I also brought in my classroom rules to display to the class.  Overall I thought this teaching experience was another improvement over the last.  One big one was how I used the time allotted to teach.  The students were much more active than last lesson, and I felt that was a big step forward.  Also in my opinion I handled a couple of students acting up very well, even though I was not very disciplinary.  One kept bouncing the ball when I was talking so I removed the ball from his hands and used him in my demonstration.  Also I am starting to use more and more variations in teaching.  I used demonstrations from multiple angles, as well as pinpointing to show how I expected the lesson to be preformed.  I feel like I keep making improvements forward step by step which is making me a better all around teacher.  Also I felt like that my voice was much clearer to understand and louder making it easier for the students to understand.  It is nice watching myself teach and seeing myself making improvements every time I teach. 

St. Mary's Lab 3

This week I worked with the pre-k group, and they really tire you out.  It was a blast working with them.  I was very impressed seeing how developed they were with their motor skills.  When we were out on the playgroup playing hot lava, tag, and hide and go seek I was very impressed with their running ability.  It seemed that some of them, at least the children that I was working with were well beyond the initial stage of running, into the early elementary, and about ready to jump right into the mature running state.  As we moved inside I lead a game called crossing the brook.  In this game I brought two jump ropes laying next to each other on the gym floor and we jumped over them using the leap and horizontal hop that we were observing earlier in the day.  The children performed very well with these tasks, and were really eager to play the game.  It was great working with the students Monday.  I feel the more I teach here, and with 255 I am improving as a teacher tremendously.  I look forward to next week to improve my teaching ability to become the best teacher that I can become.  Working here at St. Mary's is a blast, it is a very good learning experience, and I look forward to continuing the semester working here helping the students improve their physical education abilities.

Cricket Resource Packet

On Monday in EDU 255 I will be teaching cricket.  It is part of our international packet to teach a non American sport.  I look forward to the challenge of bringing in technology into the class and being able to teach cricket to the class.

Video clip for 201

The making of this clip was very enjoyable.  I am looking forward to creating our skit.

Lab B

 I thought my teaching in lab b is a steady improvement from lab a.  One major obstacle I faced in lab b was not being able to teach in the gym.  Instead I had to teach in the squash courts.  For me this was a good experience.  Unfortunately I did not do what I quite wanted to do because of the confined space.  I wanted to have the class in groups of three so everyone was active, instead I had to have two sets of ropes going with a line of 4 or 5 people waiting to jump in which I did not want to have.  Although we had a change in where we had to teach I learned a lot from it.

The biggest thing I learned was to adapt to what you have to teach with.  Seeing that I had a much smaller space to teach my lesson I had to learn on the fly how to change my lesson to adapt to my surroundings.  I feel that I am getting stronger being able to get up in front of my peers to teach, I am not as nervous as I was on the first day and I can hear it in my voice.  I'm still not perfect in my teaching abilities but I am continuing to improve and will continue to work hard to become the best teacher that I can be.

Mini Conference

Last week on October 7 I attended the SUNY Cortland mini conference.  This was a very neat experience and I really enjoyed it.  I helped work the registration desk during the morning shift.  I just wanted to get involved and help out in some way.  Also I attended the big parachute and little toys activities workshop.  Mr. John Smith came to present this activity.  Mr. Smith is a retired national teacher of the year and is currently a consultant for Flaghouse Inc.  I found this workshop to be very useful because I can use these activities that I learned and incorporate them into my physical education class.  We learned many activities for a large parachute and some activities with little toys such as noodle bits, foam pizzas, and shake sticks.  I really enjoyed this workshop and I hope I can use some of these activities because I want to be an elementary teacher and the students would absolutely love them.  Here is a link to get some ideas for games and products that may come in handy as a teacher. http://www.flaghouse.com/

Observations for Lab 2

Monday's lab was very enjoyable for me.  I felt like the students really enjoyed the games that they participated in.  All of the students seemed very enthused and eager to be there, and also seemed really excited to see us there to interact with them.  I made a poster to go with the theme of the day, and the theme was friendship.  I helped create a poster that spelled "FUN" with the Spongebob FUN song lyrics on it.  As for our game that Devon and I had the students play, I felt went very well.

 Yes, their are some things that we need to improve but overall I feel that it went very smoothly.
We related it to Finding Nemo, and the students really enjoyed that because they could relate to the movie.  We had to save Nemo and avoid getting tagged by the sharks.  The students were very eager to play it that it was difficult keeping their attention to finish explaining the game to them.  I was very pleased with the way the game went.  Also the students really enjoyed the chicken dance too.



 It is very gratifying seeing their faces light up when they are playing the games.  I really look forward to going back their to work with them again.  Also I look forward to working with children in the future to further their physical education in order to lead a physically fit and active lifestyle.

How do you better dodgeball?

Dodgeball is a game that was played in physical education classes and now it is placed in the hall of shame.  Dodgeball is considered inappropriate in the educational setting because it singles out students as well as having students inactive during games.  I personally feel it should be in the physical education curriculum but with some modifications.  You can have targets at the back of the gymnasium that the students have to hit instead of aiming for other classmates.  But in order to knock down the targets you have to stand a specified distance away and you can have defenders that can try to block the targets.  If you hit someone that is not a defender you would go to one side of the gym and can try to hit the targets from that specified area, and once one target gets knocked down everyone who went to 'jail' can be released.  This way you are not having students targeted, they are targeting a stationary object.  Also everyone is active trying to knockdown the targets, it helps with the issue that no one is sitting down anymore.  As a physical education teacher we want everyone to be active as much as we can!!

Lab A2

I felt that this lab was much easier to teach than on the first day.  I felt like I made great strides teaching from the very first day of class until now.  The first time I taught, I felt shell shocked because I have never taught before and did not know what I really needed to do.  I was much more comfortable teaching, and I will continue to get more and more comfortable as I continue.  I was much more prepared for this lab because I had a structured lesson plan written out.  Also in my notebook I wrote out my hook and what I was going to say. Using cues is an important factor in teaching as well.  I developed some cues to use like clap once to get the students attention, and clap twice to have them bring it in.  It was much easier to do my transcript too, because I could actually here myself talk.

I was much louder when I talked and gave directions.  I though my hook was very good because I related it to a real life situation.  It is important to relate it to the students because if you just start out just giving directions and backgrounds the students will lose attention fast.  Over all I feel that this lab was a very drastic improvement from the very first day.

I look forward to bettering myself as a physical educator, and becoming an influence on students life's to better their fitness level.

Chapter 4 questions

2) A teacher can improve communication with learners during lessons came come in a variety of ways.
The teacher should give lead by giving a hook.  For example if your teaching goalkeeping and you want to have your students go down onto a knee so they keep their body behind the ball you could relate it to proposing and how you go down on a knee to propose.  You want to engage the students so they are eager to learn and participate in the lesson.  By doing this it is an easy way to let the student know what they are going to be doing today.  Letting the student know what their doing is important because you want them to have an understanding to what they are going to be learning.  Another way to improve communication is to make the lesson personal.  Either you can relate it to personal experiences; or you could have demonstrations can call up the students by name to demonstrate what you want them to do.  One big thing is when engaging students is to be dynamic.  Nobody likes to have a monotone who does not ever vary the class and how it is going to be taught.  As a physical education teacher it is important to keep your students actively engaged.  You can do this by changing how you demonstrate lessons, varying the way you talk, dress up to teach the parts, along with many other ways to keep your students actively involved.

3) Demonstrations are important for effective teaching.  With a demonstration you want to make sure that  all your information is correctly taught to your students.  If all possible you want to have your students perform the demonstrations because it gives them a better understanding for what you want them to do.  Also as a teacher you should try to have the demonstration performed a couple of times from different angles just incase it was hard for students to see and to allow the students to see what is expected from a couple of different angles.  Students are more likely to do what you want them to do if they see it visually, and not just what they hear from you verbally.  Additionally you should always check for understanding (CFU).  You can ask questions about the task, and what is asked of them to do.  You should refrain from asking "Do you understand?" because it is an open ended question, and students are less likely to answer these type of questions.

5) Learning cues identify the important information for given skills.  Good learning cues involve accuracy because if what you teach is not accurate the what you teach them and how the perform it will be obstructed for the rest of their life.  Also you want to highlight the most important cues as well.  A second characteristic to have is that the learning cues are critical to the task that is taught.  You do not want to overwhelm the students so it is important that you highlight the most important concepts.  Cues are best taught with few rather than too many.  It goes back to not overwhelming the student, you want to keep it simple and keep them engaged in the lesson.  The last is that they are appropriate for the age of the learner.  You are not going to teach high schools who already know how to throw a ball the basic techniques on how to throw.  Vice versa you are not going to teach very specific steps how to throw to early elementary students.  You want to teach them what their skill level is going to allow them to do.

Learning cues for teaching how to throw a ball:

Beginning learners:
Task: Throwing a football to their partner
Cue:  Make a T with the ball in your throwing hand up, step forward with your opposite leg, point and throw swinging your arm toward your target.
Task: Throwing a ball to a moving target
Cue: You want to throw the ball in front of them so when they continue to move in that direction the ball will meet them at a spot.
Task: Following through on a throw
Cue: After you throw the ball you want to swing the leg you did not step with forward over the imaginary bucket

Advanced learners:
Task: Playing catch with a football
Cue: Step with your opposite leg, make sure your arm goes down, back, up, then forward.  Make sure you are square with your target
Task: Throwing a ball to a receiver
Cue: Throwing a ball in a game has different sinerios.  The distance is always different, how hard you have to throw it, where you throw it to.
Task: Follow through and grab your pocket.
Cue: Follow through on your throw bringing your hand and touching your opposite pocket, opening up your shoulders and hips.

Questions for chapter 2

3) The requirements for learning a motor skill are the prerequisites, clear idea of the tasks, the implication for the teacher, motivational/attentional disposition to the skill, practice, and feedback.  Each step is very important to learning motor skills.  The prerequisites involves already having experience with previous easier skills that they have mastered.  The clear idea of the task is important because the students need to have a concrete idea of what they are going to be learning and what they are trying to do with the next task.  The implication of the teacher is important because you as the teacher need to make sure you have an open line of communication between you and your students of what you expect them to preform.  The motivational/attentional dispositions to skills the students need to be eagerly engaged in wanting to learn and perform the skills they are practicing.  Practice is important because you want to the student to be the best they can be at preforming the specified tasks.  You have to keep practicing to better yourself at each skill, your muscles have to be trained.  Feed back is important because as a teacher you want to help each student preform at the best of their ability.  You should always give the positive feedback first because you are expressing what they excel at.  After this is done you should give them the feedback of what they need to work on the better themselves at the skills.
4) Open skills are skills regulated by changes in the environment.  An example of this skill would be fielding a ground ball in baseball.  As a fielder you never have the same ground ball hit to you, everyone comes at you at a different angle and even take strange hops.  A closed skill would be a skill where the environment remains constant.  An example of this skill is shooting penalty kicks in soccer, the distance is constant as well as the goal.  A discrete skills are preformed with complete starts and stops.  An example of this would be pitching mechanics, they have a direct start and stop.  A serial skills are skills that are put into series.  An example of this is hitting a baseball then running to first base.  You combine hitting and running as one skill.  Each skill should be taught in a way that makes sense.  It does not any sense to teach serial skills before closed skills if the student does not know how to hit, run, or any other complex skill that is takes multiple skills to learn.  I feel that everyone can teach these skills in their own distinct styles as long as they make sense to teach them in order.  As a coach it would be much easier to teach these skills because to move on to the more complex skills for that sport they have to master the fundamentals.

Chapter 1-3

Assessing the skill development the fundamental skills as students progress in age is extremely important.  Students need to progress to be able to achieve everyday tasks such as walking, writing, running, and many more activities.  Having students achieve a performance benchmark should be your main goal as a teacher.  According to Gallahue and Donnelly, A performance benchmark is a behavior that indicates progress toward a performance goal (5).  A performance benchmark for example could be throwing a football with a correct spiral eight times out of ten attempts.  Underneath performance benchmark is performance standard as well as content standard.  These are what the student should be able to do as well as the expected level of achievement (5).

Motor skills need to develop in sequences.  Its is very unlikely that an eighteen month old baby is going to go out, run and win the Boston Marathon.  They need to go through several developmental stages in order to mature as a physically active being.  For instance before you can run you have to be able to walk, and before you can walk to have to be able to stand.  As one develops their motor skills with walking they learn to walk sideways, up a set of stairs, down a set of stairs, then on to a hurried walk (38-39).  Eventually their running and walking capabilities develop into the mature stage.  Once the mature stage has been reached they will continue to develop into better runners and learn about the different techniques as the mature.

Assessing the developmental skills a very important.  One reason is because as a teacher you want all of your students to be the most physically fit they can be.  It is extremely important to asses with the NYS and NASPE standards.  These standards specify that all students are able to perform basic motor skills, they are able to value physical activity, have resources available for them, and preform physical education safely.  Being able to move fundamentally is an important aspect to physical education.  Before advancing to more difficult tasks students have to be able to master the basics, and lower level skills.  By being able to asses these things, you as a teacher assist the slower developers in becoming fundamentally sound, and also seeing when a student demonstrates each concept wholly they allow them to move on in their development.    

Transcript to Lab A1

http://www.youtube.com/user/RockstarPE#p/c/8D67B07CA2AD609F/8/AMLFzaWkYq4

Transcript to video.

Lab 1

Today this is what I observed in lab.

relationships between teaching functions and skills

Teaching functions and teaching skills go hand in hand.  Teaching functions allow us as teachers to focus why we are teaching the behavior rather than focusing on the behavior itself.  To preform your teacher function, it all depends on how you feel comfortable teaching it.  Examples of this can be videos demonstrations, and even explanations.  Teaching skills are basically the skills that you are trying to teach through the use of teaching functions.  One teaching function is presenting the task to they students.  One way you as a teacher can go about this is through the use of video and how some other professional teaches the skill.  Another was is through the use of demonstrations.  Being the teacher you can show the students how to properly preform the specified task using your professional knowledge about it.  For example teaching volleyball.  You can show a video how to demonstrate one aspect of the game and you can use your knowledge to teach them another aspect of the game.  Another one is developing the content.  One way this can be done is to have the students work on accomplishing them individually.  Another way is to have them work on completing the tasks in groups and having them participate in mini competitions between the groups.

movement task-- student response

Movement tasks are very important to students in physical education.  The movement task is essentially the heart and soul of physical education because they are the activities that the students must master to be able to move on in the lesson.  For example look at a lesson created for basketball.  First a student must have mastered the ability to run before he/she can move on to the next step of dribbling.  To help the students to become 'masters' in that skill they must practice.  You can have them dribble the ball down the line five times without losing control.  Or another could be shooting free throws.  Since they are an important part of the game of basketball, you could have them practice until the make 5 in a row.  They are the basic motor activities that allows the student to progress forward in the lesson.  Students learn about the rules of the game and how it is played as they progress through accomplishing the movement tasks.  It is also important for the teacher to provide feedback in how that particular student is mastering the specific skill that is being taught that day.  Providing positive feedback is very important for the students because it helps them learn how to preform the tasks correctly and it gives the students a positive moral if the teacher compliments them on how well they are doing.

How teaching is a goal oriented activity

Teaching is a goal oriented activity because you teach your students skills they need at their age.  Teaching early elementary students concepts that you would teach seniors in high school would not be appropriate for their skill set.  As a teacher you want your students to achieve their goals that you set for them for that specific activity and school year.  For example you want your kindergartners to learn the basic motor skills before moving on to much more difficult stuff.  As your students progress in age you want them to progress their skills in physical activity as well.  You set goals for your students to achieve on a yearly basis, if you see one student struggle and not achieve one of the goals you set for your teaching lessons than you might see yourself as not a failure, but someone to think 'what could I have done better'.  Whatever level you teach you always have goals for your students to learn and achieve before they feel comfortable to tackling more difficult adventures.

http://youtu.be/AMLFzaWkYq4

First Blog

This is my first time that I have ever blogged.  I really don't know what to expect.  I look forward to the year in PED 201