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.        

 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.