A little taste of Cricket

On Wednesday, November 11th, I got the opportunity to teach something completely new to me. My partner Dan Barcavage and I decided to teach a lesson on cricket. This is the lesson plan that we created for this lab. Before this lab, I've never played or even know how to play the game of cricket. For my lesson, I decided to focus on the batting aspect of cricket. More specifically, I focused on the defensive side of hitting. To help the students learn the aspects the defensive hitting, I created three short and simple cues that the students could easily remember. I demonstrated the forward type of defensive swing first, then I had the class get partners and work on that specific defensive hit. I think that this method of teaching worked well, and I was able to keep and good eye over the whole class to minimize any distractions that could happen during the activity. After giving both partners a couple minutes to work on the forward defensive hit, I called the class together and demonstrated the backward defensive swing.



After I demonstrated the backward defensive swing, I had them practice that with the same type of activity as the first type of swing earlier in the lesson. During this activity, I was able to provide some inter task variation for a couple groups that looked like they were understanding both types of swings. To modify the activities for those groups, I told them they could use any type of hit they wanted to in order to stop the ball from getting past them. I think that overall this lesson went very well. After completing my time coding form, it was evident that I had enough activity time going on during my lesson. The form also shows that I needed to cut down the waiting times before activities. I think this could be done by putting more urgency in getting the students back to their activities quicker, after I'm done with my instruction. Through my time coding analysis, I can see that I did give a good amount of feedback, but could of used a little more. I might have given more feedback, but the video makes it hard to hear what I am saying when I was on the other side of the gym. The lesson as a whole went very well and I had a lot of fun teaching this unit but also learning things about cricket that I did not know. I will be looking forward to my next opportunity to showcase my teaching abilities that I have learned so far this semester.

Lab 3 at St. Mary's

On Wednesday, October 28th we got to go back to St.Marys for lab #3. This time around my group got the chance to work with the older kids in the cafeteria. That was a great time, I got to test out my checker skills against some of the students. During our time in the cafeteria, I noticed the older students that my group was working with listened to instructions better then some of the younger students.




After about an hour in the cafeteria, we moved up into the gym where things really got interesting. At first i started playing that required you to jump, catch the ball and immediately pass it to another student in the circle. That was a fun game to play with the students, and you could really see how well each student could jump up and pass at the same time. I noticed many students would just jump up and hit the ball with their hands instead of catching then throwing. That game lasted for another couple minutes and kids seemed to not be so interested in it. At this point, I started to play a little basketball game with 1 other student. This game grew to numerous students, a lab assistant and people from other groups. At this time I named the game "small ball". I think that this game hit it off with the students so well was because I was down on their level the entire time. This was a very successful game for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is that it really got the students moving, and kept them on the move the entire time the game went on. Another reason was that, the game worked out in like a play, teach, play method. It was like this because the students and I would play for a couple minutes, then I would explain to them correct defensive form and then go back to playing. I was able to do this a couple times to explain to them things like defensive, offensive, and dribbling. If I learned one thing through this game, its that these students will not stop and make sure that you don't stop moving for the entire time. It was a very fun game and a good workout as well.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane....ITS SUPERMAN!!

On Wednesday October 21st, we were able to visit St.Mary's school once again. This time was a lot of fun because there was a superhero theme for this lab. For this theme I wore a superman t-shirt. That day my group got to work with the pre-k children for the whole two hours. For the first part we were in the classroom helping the kids with different activities like coloring, and playing with blocks. During the last part of our classroom visit, I got the opportunity to read the children a story called "Stanley the Stinkbug". This was a great story to go along with the superhero theme. I had a lot of fun reading the children this story and watching all their reactions when talking about Stanley the Stinkbug and how stinky he is. I could tell the kids enjoyed it more when I got into the book with them by faces and plugging my nose.





The next part of the lab, my group and I went into the gym to play some games with the children. For the game, we had chose to play "people to people". This was a great game to play with the pre-k kids because of all the variation that I could put into the game. Every time the kids had to run around when the music was playing, I could switch up how they moved around the gym. I was switching it up frequently by telling the kids to do things like hop, skip, jump, and get real low and walk around. This was a good tool because you could really see all the children's different skill levels with things like skipping and hopping. I had a great time working with the pre-k kids and loved all their reactions when you got down to their level and worked with them.

PE Hall of Shame

When I saw that dodgeball was inducted into the PE hall of shame, I can't say that I was surprised. Even though I did play dodgeball in my PE classes all through high school, this game is not thought to highly of by many people. People who don't think this game belongs in PE think that this game can lead to injuries and secludes people who might be in not as good of shape as some of the other kids in class. Another problem people might see in this game is that once your out, you just stand there until you get the chance to come back in. Those points might be true, but I think that adjusting the rules or changing up the game slightly can make the game safe and fair to everyone. I think that if you change the rules to use a lighter ball and have students only throw at the waiste down, that will eliminate the safety concerns that are involved with this game. Also including an activity for the students to perform once their out the game, to get back in, is a good way to make sure students are moving at all times. Once the initial problems with dodgeball are addressed and taken care of, dodgeball becomes a useful PE activity that can help with things like agility, power, and hand eye coordination of the students

Video of St.Mary's and 255

Lab 1 at St. Mary's

Lab one at St. Mary's was a ton of fun. For this lab, my group and I set up a game called hot feet for the kids to play. This was a simple tag game where every student gets a bean bag and has to run around and throw it below the knees of another student. If a student got tagged by a bean bag, they had to go to a re-entry station to perform some sort of activity in order to get back into the game. During this game, I noticed that the majority of the kids were having a great time and were really enjoying the game. There were a few students, some boys and some girls, that did not want to participate at all and said they would rather be doing something else. Another problem that I noticed with this game was, the boys, always tried to throw their bean bag as hard as they possibly could. I think that this game was a success for the most part with the students. We played this game for a good amount of time and the majority of the students stayed with it and kept playing.

After playing hot feet and another game from the other group, we moved down to the cafeteria with the students. Since there was snacks waiting for the students, they quieted right down and focused on their snacks. After they ate, students had the chance to play with a variety of different toys and games. I sat down and started playing a game of checkers with a student that was not a big fan of the hot feet game and was a little hard to control in the gym. When we started playing checkers, I noticed that this student calmed right down and had no problem sitting quietly and playing. This surprised me at first but I just went with it and kept playing checkers. After the cafeteria, I got the chance to play a little game of duck, duck, goose! with many of the students. They loved this game and had many different varieties of this game, all which were fun to play. I had a great time playing games with the students for this first lab, and I can't wait to go back.

Getting into the End zone!

This past Friday, the class was able to do another mini lesson. This time it was just teaching one drill or activity involved in Ultimate Frisbee. For my lesson, I taught a drill called the end zone drill. This drill works on the student's ability to effectively move the Frisbee down the field and eventually get it into the end zone. It was a complicated drill, but after extensively going over it with the rest of the class, they finally got it down.

After listening to myself teach the lesson and writing out my transcript, I figured out what I still need to work on. One big thing that I noticed was, when calling on students, I rarely used their names. That can become a problem because using students names, when calling on them, gives them a feeling that the feedback is more personal. Using student's names also makes them aware that you are talking to only that student. Another problem I noticed is that I did not give much feedback. Since it was a complicated drill and it did take up the majority of the gym, I found it hard to move back and forth between groups to give specific feedback. One thing that I was able to do, was give a good inter-task variation. After noticing most of the students were able to perform this drill, I had them count out loud how many passes they could make to each other without dropping the Frisbee. I feel that I am constantly improving and becoming more enthusiastic every time I teach.