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