In class today we began to have tournaments in pickle-ball. I like the way that our master teacher set up the classroom, by having it so that the boys continue to move courts instead of the girls. This way, everyone gets a new partner every round and a new team to play. It was also good for us as teachers since we each got to meet more students in the class, and we got to see a wide variety of skills. For example, in other classes we were working with the same four students the entire class. You were also only able to assist those four students so if you had students that were on the lower end of the skill level, you only saw that level. This allowed use to observe a classroom as it might really be set up, where students of different skill levels played together.
This lesson I also felt that I communicated with the students and our master teacher more. I felt that communication with the students was, difficult. I had two girls on my court that were friends, and one had a higher skill level then the other and the student with the lower skill level was trying to keep up with her friend and was starting to get frustrated that she couldn't. I took her aside and showed her the proper way to hit the ball instead of trying to kill it, and when she saw that she was more successful this way, she was happier. However, her friend was more difficult. I had to tell her numerous times to stop killing the ball because she was hitting it so hard that students on the other-side of the net could not volley the ball, which was the entire point of the exercise.. She did not listen to me at all, and eventually I had to ask my master teacher if it was okay if I took her out of the game until she decided to listen. My master teacher supported me whole heartily because she had observed that I was having difficult with this student but wanted to see how I dealt with it. My teacher communicated to me afterwards, along with the other master teacher in the gymnasium, that they often have trouble with her misbehaving and not listening to teachers.
Field Experience Day Four-2/28/2012
Today we continued with pickle-ball but we had a different class then before the students went on break.I had a different group of students and this group was a group I had seen before. The focus of this blog post is the assessment of student learning.
When I first saw this group of students, they had middle of the road skills when it came to serving, and volleying the ball. However, today the students had improved their skills by a tremendous amount. They understood that they cannot hit the ball as hard as they could and expect the ball to just go over, they actually had to hit the ball at the correct angle. Also the students seemed to be more interested in actually playing the game instead of beating the other team which is what we were aiming for the entire time. Although I did not verbally assess the students to see if they have an understanding of angles, I could visually see that the students had learned.
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