PED 201 Reflection

1. Based upon observations and interactions with the St. Mary’s students, describe what you have learned about young children?  Provide examples of activities you felt were appropriate. Why? Were there activities that were not appropriate?  Why?  
   

During the past 6 labs I have learned a lot about young children. The main thing that I have realized is in the area of instruction and directions. It has been really crucial to keep directions short and sweet, and to give instructions with simple cues, in order to minimize confusion within the class.  With long directions students get really antsy and distracted, and most likely after the first minute or two they are not retaining any information you are saying. Another thing that I have learned in the 201 labs, was the way you present games is so vital to sparking the interest with the children. In the beginning labs, our class would just have a game, teach the rules and have the students play. This works but this is not a way to really get everyone’s attention and get all to participate. What our class has figured out is that you need to present to the students in a way were they are intrigued with the activity and excited to participate. For example I feel as if the best lab that my group did was the Super Hero Training Camp. Our group took a game like endless buckets and twisted it to a way we felt was fun and exciting. Sure enough we had all the kids participating, and performing the locomotor skills on hand, without them even realizing it.

2. Based upon your interactions with St. Mary’s PRE K program, describe your experience.  How was this different from working with the older age students?  Did you enjoy working with younger age children?  Why or Why not?

Working with the PRE K program was something I didn’t really expect going into this class, but I am thankful for the opportunity that we had to work with this group of youngsters. My very first week at St. Mary’s, my teaching group was thrown into the PRE K.  Our main task with in the classroom was getting the students to talk and interact with us as much as possible. I noticed that it was great to be silly, and out going with them. Most likely if you sparked a conversation with them, and were acting silly, they would play and communicate back. I wish we had the chance to work with the PreK more in the gymnasium. It was hard to get a sense of their locomotor skills because their only time in the gymnasium was at the end of the lab, when all the other grade levels were in their, giving them limited space, a noisy, and chaotic environment.  Working with the PRE K students was a difference experience then working with the older students because you really had to work on their fine motor skills, such as coloring, playing with legos, and doing various tasks with hand eye coordination.

3.  During your field experience, each of you worked with children in the cafeteria setting.  Describe the fine motor activities you observed.  Do you feel that working on fine motor activities is something we should work on in Physical Education.

Working down in the cafeteria we had a lot of different opportunities to observe various ages students work on fine motorskills. Activities we did down there included checkers, mancala, coloring, card games, legos and connect four. Although these activities themselves are not strenuous physical activities, I feel as if the fine motor skills carry over into the physical education setting. These are hand eye coordination activities, and the more control individuals have over this skill, the better they will be at certain tasks. However, I don’t feel as if fine motor skills is something that should be addressed in physical education because of time. I think there are more important things to be working on during the class period. I think fine motor skills are important, but this is something that can be practice with in the classroom.

4.  Reflecting on your growth as a future teacher, what have you learned from this experience that has given you insight as to your individual “teaching style”.  Has your teaching style emerged based upon your experience and interaction at St. Mary’s.  If yes, in what way.  If not, how else might this occur?

 I definitely think I have grown as a teacher through my experiences at St. Mary’s. In week one I remember feeling timid and afraid to be loud and give instructions to the students. I feel as if I have found better was to thing outside the box when presenting activities to children, and making it an environment where all want to participate. I think that I have definitely have come out of my shell and I am beginning to shape my teaching style, but it is also something I still need to work on. I now know the importance of being enthusiastic and presenting yourself in a professional manner, that way students respect you and in return want to participate in the activities. I feel as if I still am developing my teaching style and everyday here at Cortland I am learning new and better ways to shape my teaching style. The biggest thing about developing a teaching style is through experience like I have had at St. Mary’s and any other teaching opportunity I am going to have in my future. I am going to continue to be positive and enthusiastic, that right now I feel is the main core to my teaching style. 

(jumping Jack and the Thriving 5!)

   

 

Easter Festivities!

Today was our last lab at St. Mary's and we were left with the freedom to create our own activities for the students.  My teaching group, Jumping Jack and the Thriving Five, was stationed downstairs in the cafeteria.  My group thought long and hard about how to set up fun activities for the students in the limited space.  The First game we create was Put the Egg in the Basket, which was much like pin the tail on the donkey. We handed out eggs for the children to color, once the finished, they lined up to get blind folded and spun, and then directed to a large easter basket that was pinned on the wall. 

The second activity we set up was an egg on the spoon relay race. We split the group up into 3 groups and one at a time the students had to walk down while balancing a plastic egg on their spoon. The students really seemed to enjoy this activity as is was a fun challenge for them. We then adapted it and had them try to walk backwards, and also holding the spoon in their left hand. 

To conclude the day, everyone was in the gymnasium.  It was a fun day as to many were wearing bunny hears and filled with holiday cheer. I play jump rope with a bunch of students and they all were having a blast. TO end the day we took a group picture, and concluded the spring labs for my 201 class. I felt like it was just yesterday that i had my first lab with these students, and now it was time to saw goodbye. 

                              

Environment Day: Lab 5

1. Reflecting on your experience so far at St Mary’s, what do you think have been some difficulties or challenges you have faced?  Consider all areas – environment, children, etc.

Today’s lab we observe students overhand throw and catch.  One difficulty we had faced in creating the games was making sure the students were using a full overhand throw.  Many students through out the game would tens to get caught up in the game can just try and throw the objects underhand, or rushed their overhand throw

, having minimal follow-through and windup. Another challenge came up during the first group’s game, and I thought they made a nice adjustment. Their game was making the pizza, having chiefs throw the ingredients to the cooks, but students weren’t able to cross the middle ground of the gymnasium, which was the oven.  At first the oven was too large, and the students had great difficulty reaching their partners.  This teaching group quickly adapted by moving in the cones, making the students more successful, with out having to stop the game. This adaptation accommodated the environment in which they were working with and the children’s skill level.

 2. What ideas/suggestions do you have to resolve the difficulties or challenges that you wrote about in #1?

            To help resolve difficulties and challenges I think it is important to plan ahead and practice!  It is important to brainstorm about the activity that you are going to present and think about all possibly problems that may arise.  Also proper planning can also help you have multiple varieties of the same game that will keep the game fun and fresh for the students, which will minimize boredom, and lack of interest. It is also important to always be one your toes, while teaching. Nothing ever goes exactly as planned, so it is essential to be watching the activity and thinking how you can tweak it to fix problems the students maybe having and keep interest level up for students. 

Food Mania

1. Reflecting on your experience so far at St Mary’s, what do you think have been some difficulties or challenges you have faced?  Consider all areas – environment, children, etc.

Today’s lab we observe students overhand throw and catch.  One difficulty we had faced in creating the games was making sure the students were using a full overhand throw.  Many students through out the game would tens to get caught up in the game can just try and throw the objects underhand, or rushed their overhand throw, having minimal follow-through and windup. Another challenge came up during the first group’s game, and I thought they made a nice adjustment. Their game was making the pizza, having chiefs throw the ingredients to the cooks, but students weren’t able to cross the middle ground of the gymnasium, which was the oven.  At first the oven was too large, and the students had great difficulty reaching their partners.  This teaching group quickly adapted by moving in the cones, making the students more successful, with out having to stop the game. This adaptation accommodated the environment in which they were working with and the children’s skill level.

 2. What ideas/suggestions do you have to resolve the difficulties or challenges that you wrote about in #1?

            To help resolve difficulties and challenges I think it is important to plan ahead and practice!  It is important to brainstorm about the activity that you are going to present and think about all possibly problems that may arise.  Also proper planning can also help you have multiple varieties of the same game that will keep the game fun and fresh for the students, which will minimize boredom, and lack of interest. It is also important to always be one your toes, while teaching. Nothing ever goes exactly as planned, so it is essential to be watching the activity and thinking how you can tweak it to fix problems the students maybe having and keep interest level up for students.

 

St. Mary's SuperHeroes

St. Mary's Lab#3: Super-Hero Theme

My teaching group, Jumping Jack and the Thriving Five, were once again the first group up to teach our game to the excited students.  This time however, we were equally excited because we had well planned out our activity and brought in multiple props to help set the theme.  Our group was given the game Endless Buckets, which was a game where students would pick out task cards, and then perform the activity on the card.  Our group brainstormed on how we could make this activity fun and relate it to the theme of the day.  We came up with a great idea of taking the students through Super-Hero Training camp.  We told the students that next week all the superheroes  were taking a vacation and they had asked for our help to help train them to take over!  Our whole group game in with superhero logos on our shirts along with capes on our backs, and right away we won over the attention of the students.  We set up stations that went along with the task cards that we wrote that focused on the locomotor skill of the day. We set up a City slide, Bat cave crawl, subway chase, and a villain toss.  I thought our activity went great! We had all the students up and participating. Our props enhanced our activity so much and it helped spark interest immediately, during the activity we also played superhero theme songs in the background. 

During this lab we were observing Anthony and Rowan performing leaping, horizontal jumping, and sliding. For the leap we encountered a problem with assessing, the students often performed the leap so fast that it looked like a run. We had to set up a way to get them to do it slow, such as saying lets leap in slow motion. Both Anthony and Rowan performed the leap great, taking off on one foot and landing on the other with both feet off the ground. Anthony had a little trouble reaching forward with arm opposite the lead foot. The horizontal jump Anthony had trouble with preparation for the jump by not flexing arms and knees with arms extended behind. He would just jump forward not creating any momentum for himself.  Also during the landing he lacked bringing his arms downward.  Rowan had good preparation but didn’t forcefully use arms in full extension over her head. Rowan also had a good landing landing with both feet simultaneously and bringing arms downward. Lastly, we observed the slide. Both Anthony and Rowan, performed the slide well. The only thing they didn’t have was a period of having both feet off the ground, they tended to drag their trail foot on the ground.

To end the day, Pam and I led the group activity. We did the Cha Cha Slide. This was a great activity because it is a song they are all familiar with and it is also filled with locomotor skills such as hopping and sliding!

Hi-ho! The Dairy-o! The Farmer and the Dell

St. Mary's Lab #2: Farm Animal Theme

For lab two, my teaching group, Jumping Jack and the Thriving five, were the first group to set up the planned activities for the students at St. Mary's.  With our activity we planned a game called Barnyard, which was a game that used a large parachute.  We got to give this activity a run through in class before using it with the children, and we had it set up to what we thought would be the perfect game.  However, not everything went exactly as planned.  With this being our first organized teaching experience at St. Mary’s we didn’t know what to expect, we made a few mistakes, but in the end we were able to adjust and move on with the activity. One thing I think our group needed to work on was designating one person to be the teacher. We ran into a problem of having to many of us putting in input and shouting out directions to the class, leaving the students confused as to who was in charge. In stead I feel as if we need to just have one leader and the rest of us just work on keeping the students organized and on task.  Another thing we need to work on is presenting the activity and also directions.  We gave little instructions and had the students sit around the parachute, which turned out to not be such a great idea.  As soon as the students were sitting around the parachute, they had their hands on it, shaking it, crawling under it, making it hard for us to give instructions with the noise and the distraction of the parachute right in front of them.  Perhaps for this lab giving a overview of the whole game instructions, check for understanding, then have the students sit by the parachute would have been a better way to keep control of the class. One we regained control, we were finally able to get the game underway. We played music in the background which helped add to the theme playing songs from the Lion King, and other animal songs. This added to the activity and I feel as if it made it a better environment for the students.

Next up, it was time to pass the students along to another group, and we finally go the chance to observe. The second group did a game which was called Zany Zoo.  I thought this activity was great! The students were set up into a relay race and performed locomotor skills while getting to act, walk, and crawl like silly animals.  This teaching group did a great job explaining the game and they also utilized playing music in the background.  During this game, we were focusing in on watching the locmotor skills of runnig, galloping, and hopping, in particularly watching Casey and Shamus.  For the run, both Shamus and Casey did a great job with having arms move opposite legs, having a bent nonsupport leg, and having a period where both feet were off the ground. However, I did notice that Casey tended to run flat footed. With the gallop, both students were able to have a brief elevation with both feet off the ground, leading with both feet, and able to step forward with the lead foot followed by a step with trailing foot. One area I think both students could work on is keeping arms bent and lifted, they tended to have their arms straight at their sides. Lastly, we got to observe the hop. Casey is a nice job with the hop, the only thing that I would help her with would be her nonsupport leg, she tended to no use this leg to swing in a pendulum to produce force.  Shamus also had this problem, along with not keeping his arms bent and elbows and swinging them forward on take off. Shamus’ hops were really short distance because he didn’t use the rest of his body to give him force.

The end of the day we concluded with a group activity of the Chicken Dance. It was a lot of fun to see everyone up and clucking! I think the students really enjoy the group activity at the end because even the college students participate and interact with them during this activity. 

    

"Coaching is Teaching"

    On Thursday evening, I was able to attend the guest speaker presentation given by Paul Alexander. Paul Alexander is a Physical Education Cortland Alum, who has become a very successful coach. It was neat get the chance to hear an alumni who not too long ago long ago was sitting in the same classes as I am now, and has worked his way up to a very respectable coaching position in the NFL. Alexander has been offensive line coach for the Cincinnati Bengals for the past 14 seasons, and in the past three years he made franchise history for fewest sacks allowed by an offensive line.
The presentation given was based around, “Coaching is Teaching”. Throughout the presentation he touched upon a variety of things such as teaching, coaching, attitudes, philosophies, biomechanics, and composure. One of the things I agreed with was the importance of coaching and biomechanics. In order to be an affective coach, you must be knowledgeable in the way the body moves. He proved this with a simple demonstration. He asked two people to come up to the front, one of them standing there with arms straight out and palms facing down. He asked the other person to push down on the first persons arm while that first person tried to resist his movements and try and keep his hands up. He struggled to keep his arms up and the second person was able to push his arms down with a lot of ease. Then he asked them to perform the same task, but instead have thumb facing up. The person was able to keep his arms up a lot better than the previous try. This is simple due to biomechanics, if the thumb is face up then more muscles are activated to support the arm such as the shoulder and back muscles instead of just the arm muscles. Understanding little things like this will help you become a better coach because you will be able to help correct little things your athletes due and make them stronger and more efficient. Another important part of his speech was one of the last things he touched on and it was about composure. One example he used was Lindsey Jacobellis’s performance in the 2006 Winter Olympics. She was in a snowboard race, and she had a clear cut lead, and it was almost a sure cut lead that would guarantee her a gold medal. However on the second to last jump, it looks like she looked back as she was doing a show boat trick, causing her to wipe out. Instead of getting the gold, she got a silver medal, which she is lucky to get, because she could have walked away with nothing after a stunt like that. It is important to keep your composure at all times because you never know what will happen in sports. There are never any guaranteed or easy victories. You must always go out and give it your best effort and always be working to improve your game.
   I really enjoyed this presentation and I hope to bring some of his philosophies to my own coaching techniques someday.