Tuesday, December 22, 2009

NASPE Beginner Teacher Standards

As a teacher candidate it is essential that you "practice like you play". In all of the classes here at SUNY Cortland, I have been preparing myself for real teaching situations. Here is how I have been getting myself ready by meeting these standards.

Standard 1: Scientific and Theoretical Knowledge
Physical education teacher candidates know and apply discipline-specific scientific and theoretical concepts critical to the development of physically educated individuals.

This standard requires that as a teacher or teacher in training you must have knowledge of not just how to play different activities but you must know what is actually going on in the body tha tmakes it possible. Throughout my career here at Cortland I have completed courses such as Anatomy and Physiology 1 and 2, Exercise Physiology, Motor Behavior, and Motor Development. All of these classes have been focusing on how the body functions. Some have been the actual make up of the body and others are how different parts of the body work together to get things done. For example in Motor Development, a Lab was focusing on jumping and using a jump rope. The focus was on how their coordination has developed over the years and how they differ because of age. All of these classes have given me a very in depth look at how the body works and what really goes on during games and movement.

Standard 2: Skill-Based and Fitness-Based Competence
Physical education teacher candidates are physically educated individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary to demonstrate competent movement performance and health-enhancing fitness as delineated in NASPE's K-12 Standards

Here at SUNY Cortland physical education teacher candidates are required to take activity classes. These activity classes are designed as an introduction on how to teach different sports. Each class is sport specific and focus' on one main sport such as basketball or a certain type of sport such as Tactical Concepts. Since beginning school I have taken somewhere around 16 credits of activity courses learning a lot of valuable information of sport strategies and the different skills of the game. Each class has a required notebook that is full of game modifications, drills, and rules that will be very helpful when planning a lesson. By completing all of these notebooks there is an invaluable amount of information that will keep classes different and fun.

Standard 3: Planning and Implementation.
Physical education teacher candidates plan and implement developmentally appropriate learning experiences aligned with local, state and national standards to address the diverse needs of all students.

Standard 3 is one standard that has become second nature because of all the work on it I have done. Preparing lesson plans are the best example of standard 3. For each class that teaching goes on in a lesson plan is required. For example here is a lesson plan I have written up on teaching a beginner cricket lesson. The lesson focus was throwing and hitting. Before this lesson cricket was a foreign game to myself which I did not know much about. Through doing research I was able to develop a lesson that was made to introduce the very basics of cricket. In the lesson plan there are drills that make learning easy and also many modifications that can make the games easier or harder.

Standard 4: Instructional Delivery and Management.
Physical education teacher candidates use effective communication and pedagogical skills and strategies to enhance student engagement and learning.

Standard 4 is important because engaging students into the lesson really makes the class a lot more fun. Being able to grab the attention of the class and keep them focused because they are having fun is important. By the way you talk to a class beings a lot to the table. If you show no enthusiasm for what you are teaching it will not get your class very far and it will make your students be less enthusiastic to participate in the class.

Standard 5: Impact on Student Learning
Physical education teacher candidates utilize assessments and reflection to foster student learning and to inform instructional decisions.

Using assessments in the classroom is becoming more and more crucial for teachers. Assessments allow teachers to really get a good feeling on the ability level of a class by having concrete data instead of having all of your observations in your head. Developing either peer assessments done by students judging another student or teacher assessments that can be done while the class is participating in games are both equally important. In my statistics and assessments class I had to develop numerous assessments that would be able to collect data on the skills of students in a lacrosse unit. Here is an example of a peer assessment and a teacher assessment that i used to collect data in a lacrosse lesson.

Standard 6: Professionalism
Physical Education teacher candidates demonstrate dispositions essential to becoming effective professionals

Professionalism is one of the most important aspects of being in a classroom. As a teacher you will be coming i contact with hundreds of people a day and you always want to make the right impression. There is an endless list of things that make up being a professional. A few aspects are being respectful to teachers, students, and administrators alike, the way you talk, the way you dress, and the way you run your lessons. I feel I have met this standard because throughout the classes I have taken I always take into consideration how I act around people that teach me and people that I teach with. I feel that acting responsibly around everyone is important because others will look at you and immediately think you are a responsible individual. I have also always been dressd appropriately for my classes when I am either engaging in activities and when I am teaching them. Heres a look at what I wear when I teach.

Monday, December 21, 2009

First Real Experiences!



This semester was a semester filled with firsts. I FINALLY got into the phys ed program and I FINALLY got to start having practical experiences in a real school setting. For 6 weeks this fall I would visit Dryden Elementary School for our PED 201 lab. It was a great time! In group's we had to come up with activities and games to play with the students while observing them and seeing how developmentally different they all are. We observed children between the ages of 5 and 10 which are grades K-5. It was amazing how much stuff you pick up by actually working in a real school setting instead of doing peer teaching.

Each week had a different theme where we had to observe different movements of a certain student of our choice. The first week was an introductory class. We had a list of activities we wanted to play with the students so we could get acquainted with how the full 2 hrs would run each week. The second week was a different story. This weeks focus was on throwing and catching. Each week had a different lab that we had to fill out after the class so we had data to write about and analyze afterwards. Take a look at what I wrote! At some point during the 2 hrs we would each have 1 student taht we would work with and play different drills that we thought of to best demonstrate their ability in the certain skill. For this particular week I worked with a 5 year old boy named Caleb. Compared to the other boys in our group he had a low ability level because of his age. He was not very coordinated which is to be expected because he is just beginning to be in good control of his body. A lot of these activities and labs were also designed to help develop the skills of each student.

Another aspect that we went over was how we taught a class. While observing the student's we would also be taking note of what kind of games, motivation, and attention aided to a better organized class. Believe it or not but there are certain things that work better then others when trying to get a task accomplished. For example in Lab 5 we were specifically observing what kind of thigns got and kept the attention of the students best, and what kind of games were appropriate and relevant to what was going on.

Overall, the 12 hours of experience I got was better then any 12 hours of peer teaching I could do because it really showed me what to expect in regards to behavior, participation, and ability level/game modifications.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Fruits, Veggies, and Exercise. Do you know the difference?

Here are two new games that can get children acquainted with what is good and not good for them.

http://www.playnormous.com/game_braingain.cfm

http://www.playnormous.com/game_bubbletrouble.cfm

The first game Brain Gain is an easy interactive game done online to test the knowledge on what is considered a fruit, vegetable, or a certain type of exercise which would either be strength or aerobic. The strength type could be a exercise such as Door Frame Isometrics shown in the picture below.



A few different options pop up on the screen and you must click the correct answer that goes along with the picture. There are different levels that you go through which ask similar questions about different fruits and vegetables. They will also ask you to decipher between what is a healthy food and what is not shown in the picture below.



I think this game would be beneficial for maybe an elementary school level phys ed class. It is a very basic game which most older student's would find boring and pointless. As I was going through this I was not very intrigued to play this game for a long time probably because of my age and the type of basic knowledge it incorporated. But as for a youger student I can definately see them getting into this game and having fun with it while it would also be teaching them different things about a healthy lifestyle.

The next game I played was called Bubble Rubble. This was a different game which mainly dealt with the physical type of exercise that goes alopng with being healthy. You are playing as a little creature that you move around the screen and try to catch different activities that add onto aerobic fitness. This would include running, swimming, walking, gymnastics, and anything else that would increase your aerobic fitness. There are also activities such as watching tv, talking on the phone, and things of that nature that do not help out your fitness levels. Here is a picture of what it would look like.



This is a good game that would give kids ideas of what they could do to stay in shape. Staying in shape does not always mean lifting weights or going for a run. This will help children realize that there are so many things they can do to stay fit. By looking at all the different activities, they will have a good sense of what to do to stay in shape. This would also be a good game to have student's do at home or as a little intro during class.

Here is a slideshow of the different parts of each game to see what it looks like to play the game. You can also see the different types of questions being asked.



Here is a sample lesson plan, task progression sheet, and an activity sheet that could go along with these type of games and unit.

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Last Hoorah

So the semester is coming to an end and that means the last lesson I'm ever going to teach in 255 is over and done with. Lab D was one of the funner labs we got to do. Everyone had to teach some sort of activity that is not an everyday PE class sport. Bowling, swimming, DDR, stomping, and all the others were lots of fun. My objective was to teach a lesson using physio balls. Physio balls are great tools for a lesson because there are so many different things you can do with them. They can be used for fitness workouts doing crunches, push ups and almost any modification to a workout or they can be used in the most creative ways.
The weekend before I was scheduled to teach I attended the NYSAHPERD conference at the Turningstone Casino. I had a really great time attending all of the different sessions and learning different warm ups, games, and various things about the body. I was lucky enough to walk into the first session I attended and found this fun activity. A few teachers had come up with a fun game that they can tie into a fitness or dance unit. I did my best to take what I had learned from them and make up my own lesson to it.



That is the only video of my lesson I could find on youtube but if I hapen to come across the rest of my lesson I will put it right up here. SO being that I can not do much with this video I'll go through what went on. The goal of this lesson was to have fun and get everyones heartrate into the optimal zone. Looking back this was not a great objective for a lesson especially since the goal is to have objectives that pertain to something other then having fun or getting the heart rate up which should be incorporated into every lesson. I began the class with a small game of squad tag. I divided the class into 4 teams and would have one team go at a time. The goal was to tag everyone else in the class faster then all of the other groups. I made the boundaries the 3-point line and the baseline. Each team would go once but could go twice if I wanted to work on strategizing.



After this I brought the class in to give a breif explination of what we were about to do. One thing i stressed was safety. Being that we would be working with drum sticks of some sort I did not want anyone swinging them around, having sword fights, or putting them near anyone else period. I then had everyone grab a pair of sticks and get on a ball with a partner. We then went through the different "moves" that could be used during the song. There was a list of maybe 8 different moves we could do. I had them listed on my poster board just in case anyone forgot what each one incorporated. After about 5 minutes of going through the moves and practicing them, we got a song going and started to dance.

I think that this lesson went fairly well for what I was trying to accomplish. Everyone seemed to be having fun with what we were doing. There was also a lot of thigns I did not do. To start off with, one of the main problems I had was giving feedback. There was no way I would be able to stand in the front of the room and walk around giving feedback to people. I definately should have given a little routine to keep doing so I could walk around giving feedback to each person. Another problem I had was not using intratask variations. Everyone was doing the same movements and there was no change for people who had better rhythm or someone who could not keep up. Giving the class an assignment to make their own routine could have been a good variation for the class.



Overall I could have made this lesson 100 times better then it actually was. I did not do a great job at anything besides the fact that this activity was pretty fun and everyone enjoyed it. Next time I use this(because I definately will) I will have it worked out a lot better so the class can get the most out of my lesson.