Working at the Murray Center

One of our assignments for EDU 255 was to volunteer 10 hours outside of class in a setting that would be similar to teaching. Jess Forte and I volunteered at the J.M Murray center to work with individuals with disabilities at their morning fitness club sessions. We started every session with a warm up that involved stretching with free weights or scarves and then moved on to other activities in the fitness room. We had the consumers use balloons and beach balls to work on hand eye coordination and we used Lummi sticks to help them be able to stay on the beat of certain songs. Jess and I always used music at the fitness club as well. The consumers responded well to and really enjoyed country music and 90's dance hits. The consumers worked on aim through throwing soft dice and bean bags at hula hoops across the room. The main part of fitness club took place in the dance room. Jess and I taught a dance to the monster mash during Halloween as well as the Cha Cha slide, Electric slide, and the Macarena. The picture at the top is a picture of myself teaching two consumers Ruth and Shane the Macarena. Because the consumers love country music, Jess and I also taught a number of line dances. We did line dances to Cotton-Eyed Joe and Achy Breaky Heart. We always ended fitness club with a cool down. In the beginning we did stretches similar to those we used as a warm-up. As we moved further on in the semester we decided to incorporate Tai Chi and the Ju-Fu Kata, a self defense relaxation technique, into our cool down routines. Overall I really enjoyed this experience and would love to volunteer at the Murray Center again in the future. This experience boosted my confidence in my choice to add a concentration in Adaptive Physical Education.

Chris's Assignment

For Chris's assingment we were to reflect upon how players use deception and placement tactics in the game of badminton. We were asked to view a clip of a very long badminton rally on youtube. The players use deception in a variety of ways. They use shots that make their opponents believe they will be hitting it to a certain spot on the badminton court but hit it in an entirely different direction. They also deceive their opponents with off speed shots. The swing makes it look as if the shot will be very fast but it ends up being high and slow. The players also used placement tactics to beat their opponents. They hit the shuttle to all areas of the court in order to catch their opponents off balance as well as hitting it to the backhand side. Chris did a good job of emphasizing the importance of deception in the game of badminton during his lab c presentation.

Exploration Scavenger Hunt

Last friday our EDU 255 TA's Freddy and DJ helped show the class how to teach by teaching for us. They put on a scavenger hunt with a hook about being famous explorers. We were required to wear heartrate monitors while we participated in the scavenger hunt as well. As you'll be able to tell from the picture of my heartrate, my monitor wasn't always working. We were sprinting from place to place to try and get all the pictures DJ asked us to get. My monitor wasn't staying in place so it looked as if I had no heartrate at all. There was also a fire drill so when our entire class was outside park center my monitor didn't work with so many people's monitors being too close to my watch. For the few moments everything was going smoothly my heartrate was quite high. I was only in the target zone for 13% of the time. I'm not sure if that means i'm out of shape or that i needed a tighter strap for my monitor. I'm going to go with needing a tighter strap for confidence reasons. My favorite activity was the instant activity of coming up with an idea for our flag for our group and then speed coloring it. I thought it was a very creative instant activity. I enjoyed the entire activity. I liked how it kept everyone engaged, interested, and most importantly active throughout its entirety. I also enjoyed the way technology was incorporated into the activity. I most definitely will take this with me when i teach in the future. I think its important to try new and different things to reach out to students they may not respond well to just physical activity. I can see myself doing a scavenger hunt type activity in the future as well. It is an activity that can help incorporate interdisciplinary teaching into the lesson which I feel is important for students. Learning similar information in two different classes will only help a student understand the information faster and more easily. Freddy and DJ did this through making the scavenger hunt include information about famous explorers students would be learning about in history classes.