Field Experience 4/20/12

Our second class of the day was back to our normal class. Our master teacher was out this week on her vacation so we had sub that actually is going to Cortland right now. She let us take over the class from the beginning. We went over the rules, which lane could and could not go into. We also set up rotations for goalie so there was no arguing when the time came to switch. Since this was a bigger class we split the girls up into 3 teams and had them play four minute games so that way they all played the same number of games.

The only thing I would really do differently looking back is say something more to one of the students who was not participating as well as the others. Not necessarily negative things but maybe cheer her on more and when she did something correct be overly encouraging to get her going before taking her aside and asking what is wrong.

Field Experience 4/20/12

Today we did double at Homer. The first class we were with the guys host teacher and the kids were playing indoor soccer still. The class we were observing was not our usual class and it was extremely small and it was only a class of girls.

However, I felt that the game was better played with a group of smaller girls. They all got to play the entire time and did not have to keep switching back and forth which is our ultimate aim as physical education teachers. However, the teaching style was completely different. Instead of going through the rules and how to actually play offense and defense before the game, the teacher let the game start and then kept throwing out directions while they were playing. While this is a good idea since it keeps reminding them of they are suppose to be doing, I feel that the rules should have been reviewed before the girls started playing.

It was good to see the students really getting into it though and they did keep moving. There were no students that we had to talk to to keep moving or to play they all were participating and having a great time.

Field Experience 4/17/2012

Today we were teaching at the Cortland Christian Academy doing our per-assessing of our skill theme balancing.  Instead of our usual 6th grade class we were teaching 2nd and 3rd graders. It was a little weird going to a different school. At Homer we are really comfortable there, we know exactly where to go how to get there we talk to the secretary in the office all the time. Going to a different school is definitely confusing. We got lost getting there and then we didn't know how to actually get into the school.

I have heard of schools that use regular classroom teachers to teach physical education, but hearing about it and seeing it are two completely different things. I feel that the 355 students who got to go to this school got a really great experience. Although it was probably a lot of work being expected to teach every single time they went, they really got a huge experience teaching and I have to admit I am a little jealous.

I feel that our pre-assessing went okay. We definitely could have done a lot better. We should have communicated better with the two girls that were teaching that day instead of just assuming that they were doing stations. As a teacher I feel that you need to plan for everything, including taking charge even if you may not be in charge of that lesson. I also feel that we should have planned how we were doing our assessing better. NASPE says that when assessing elementary students to use stations and to make it so that students do not realize they are being assessed. We did the complete opposite. We pulled the students out of their soccer game one by one and assessed them that way, and when that was not working we had the students do it all together which was actually extremely hard.

All in all, not our finest moment. Then again if every teacher was perfect we wouldn't have to go through all this experience. Lesson learned for the next assessment!

Field Experience 4/3/2012

Today's lesson we were suppose to do our skill theme with our class. We had picked jump roping and we were going to teach them how to cross the rope while jumping and assess them on how many times out of ten they could successfully cross the rope.

From the beginning there seemed to be a conflict with trying to fit our lesson in. With all the vacations going on and testing, we were crammed for time so we were doing the per-assessment, teaching, and post-assessment all in the same day. However, I was under the impression that although we would not be teaching and/or assessing the whole class, we would at least have a small group of girls that we would be teaching while the rest of the class played indoor soccer. This was not the case. We were per-assessing, teaching, and  post-assessing all in a matter of five minutes.

When I heard that this is what we were going to be doing. I was a little shocked since we are suppose to be actually teaching not just observing and I felt that is all we had been doing. This also showed me how much communication is important because if we had known the time constraints and the that we were not going to have the whole class to teach a skill we could have picked a more simple skill or maybe tried to figure a better plan to fit in where we could actually teach.

The rest of the class the students were playing indoor soccer. I like how our master teacher actually went through and explained the rules and how to play. She also worked in a ton of check for understandings to make sure the students 100% knew what they were doing. It was not just a simply roll out the ball and play indoor soccer, it was a legit game of soccer.

Field Experience 4/20/12

The fourth and last class of the day.

In this class we were assessing fourth and fifth graders on dribbling. We were assessing them on whether or not they learned the cues (cognitive) and how well they worked together in class (affective).

We again, took what we learned from our pre-assessing mistakes and learned from them when doing this assessments. This time, since the students were a little bit older, we set up stations for them to complete. One stations the students had to practice dribbling around cones, and then we had them dribble into the cones in order to knock them over to help test their ability to control the ball. The third stations was the station I was manning, and this was the cognitive assessment station. I had cue cards that had the correct dribbling cues on them, mixed in with cue cards that were wrong. I had two of each and I had two students go at once and race against each other to see who could complete the assessment first. Most of the students got it the first time around, although there were a couple that I had to keep saying look again! After the kids had gotten the answer correct I gave them back their basketball and let them play dribble knock out.  The third station was the affective assessment station. Here the kids played kind of a tag game while dribbling, and at the end they had to fill out the smiley face sheet. If they did really well they circled a big smile for the question, a neutral face if they did okay and a sad face if they thought they did bad. The students were surprisingly honest. There was not one paper they had a full smiley face circled for every question.

I felt that the lesson went really smooth. The only big issue we ran into was that we were told that half the students would be leaving so we kind of rushed through everything so that all the students had a chance to go through all the stations and be assessed. In the end, only two students left early and the rest left maybe five minutes before class ended. If we ran into something like this again, we would ask which students typically leave first and have them do the assessment stations first so if worse came to worse they would miss out on the one station that was not an assessment station. 

Field Experience 3/30/2012

The lesson that was conducted today, not only had students learn to work together in teams, but it also tied in their English classes into the p.e. The students were put into two groups, and were told to work together to figure out which two students would do which station. One group had a bit of an issue doing this, a student in one of the groups our master teacher informed us gets nervous and starts crying and forgets what he's suppose to be doing. To work around this, the students tried to just tell the student what he was going to be doing instead of asking the student what he would like to do. This was not wrong of the students, but they are too young to have any experience with dealing with this.

After the groups were formed and the students knew which stations they were going to perform our master teacher handed them a card with a werbble (worrble?) on it that the students had to solve in order to move on to the next skill. This mixed English class with Physical Education and also worked the cognitive domain into the lesson by having the students need to think about what the worrbles meant.

We did have a bit of an issue with another student. Two seconds after our master teacher handed her the card she got the answer. This worrble was something that we did not even know, and our master teacher even said there was no way she knew the answer unless someone told her. This is a student that we have had trouble with all semester with not listening or not following rules. Our master teacher ended up taking the card away and giving the group a new card.

Field Experience 3/27/2012

Today in class we continued with project adventure and the trust falls. The master teachers had the students do a brief review of what they learned last class, and then they had them do trust falls off the bleachers and do levitation's in a group.

Our host teachers management style of this class was very organized. Both master teachers split the strongest kids in the class equally so they both had the same number in each falling group. The master teachers then stepped in and lined the students up. They put taller students towards the front, with the student teachers and stronger 6th graders in the middle with students being on the short side at the end. This allowed students to safety fall without the fear of being dropped. When it comes to trust falls, the teachers definitely need to have a more direct teaching style then they usually would since there is a huge safety concern when conducing this unit.

The next station was to do levitation in groups. The students had to work together in order to lift the student in the center. If one student went to fast or to slow it would feel like the student was being dropped. The student teachers were each assigned a group to keep an eye on with the master teachers walking around. I had an issue in my group of girls when one of the girls thought it would be funny to say let her fall let her fall. I had to stop the entire group and tell them that if I heard it again I would sit the whole group, since I couldn't figure out who has said it.