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/