Field observation!

For my EDU 256 class I was given the opportunity to observe and teach at my former high school, and middle school (Canisteo-Greenwood Central School District). At the high school I worked with my host teacher to create a bulletin board for badminton serves, I worked with a student with disabilities and behavior management issues in phys ed and non-phys ed settings, I interviewed an expemplary teacher, and I actively assisted an extra-curricular activity. At the middle school I was able to work with another children with a learning disability in a variety of settings, I was able to lead warm-ups for students in grades 5-8 as well as teaching full lesson segments. On a few occasions I was even given the opportunity to teach the entire class. Also at the middle school I attended a school board meeting. At each placement I was required to observe my host teacher using the c9 form we used for lab d in 255. Throughout the two week period I was required to finish 12 modules not including a host teacher review of my performance. I will have all modules attached at the end for you to see. Overall I felt the entire experience was an eye opener. I never thought of myself as a middle school or an elementary teacher. After working with high-school students i'm pretty sure thats not the direction I want to go. I really enjoyed working with the middle school age group. I had fun being goofy and enthusiastic but they were still athletic enough to engage in activities I would have fun in.

KORFBALL LAB D

Lab D was very similar to lab c except that we were given 15 minutes to work by yourself rather than working with a partner. I chose to continue with Korfball rather than switching sports after consulting with DJ. One of the requirements for lab d was that we meet with a TA to go over our lesson plan. Meeting with DJ could not have possibly been more beneficial to me. At first I was a little discouraged that he tore my lesson plan apart but I realized how much better I would now do after getting help. I felt I did a much better job on Lab d than Lab c. I improved my activity time to be above 50% and kept my management and wait time under 15% and 5% respectively. I do need to continue to work on keeping my instruction time down but I feel that may have been influenced by the actual sport I was teaching rather than just my teaching abilities. Ideally you would want your instruction time to be less than 30% of your lesson. Mine took up 39% of my lesson which I'm not very upset with. I was worried my instruction time would outweigh my activity time so seeing my time coding form was a pleasant surprise. I thought my instant activity went well as well as my task of 4 on 4 korfball. I most definitely looked more professional and tried to sound more professional also. I dont know my score overall score yet but i'm confident with my performance and I just have to remember to calm down and not write things on my hand if I don't want the TA's to laugh at me:) Here is my lab d time coding form where you can see what percentage of my lesson is management time, activity time, instruction time and waiting time. I also have my lab d transcript as well as my feedback analysis form so you can see how i've improved in both my speaking (which still needs work) and my ability to give feedback which I feel has always been one of my stronger points. I have my lab c/d packet that contains an entire Korfball unit and my lab d lesson plan that goes with it.

KORFBALL LAB C

Our first teaching experience with lesson plans was lab c. We were assigned partners and asked to pick a sport to teach our peers. Kate and I were partners and we chose Korfball, a basketball-like sport from the Netherlands. The whole experience was a lot more difficult than I expected. I realized lesson plans are much more difficult than I had previously assumed them to be. I also forgot to add in quite a few key teaching concepts. I'm comfortable with the concepts of pinpointing and intertask variation but I failed to incorporate either into my lab c presentation. I believe that the more I teach, the more comfortable I will become and I wont forget to add in the simple things that make a lesson better. To start off I really have to work on using better grammar. The transcript I made from my lab c mp3 showed that I dont sound very professional. I do have strong points however. I feel I do a good job at giving feedback. My feedback analysis form for lab c had a wide variety of different students on it. The majority of my feedback was specific and congruent as well. Overall I feel I performed to the best of my ability. It was very difficult to teach Korfball to the class because I had to spend a lot of time teaching rules and instructing which took away from activity time. You can see how I used my time for lab c by checking out my time coding form. I will definitely use the knowledge I've acquired from this lab to help me continue to improve with each teaching experience.

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.

PE mini-conference

This year was not only the first year I attended a mini-conference but it was also the first time I got to participate as well. Before our guest speaker my EDU 255 class along with Dr. Yang's other EDU 255 class got to march out and help with the icebreaker activity. It went really well and i think we did a good job of representing our class and SUNY Cortland. After the icebreaker activities, Dr. John R. Passarini spoke on his experiences with Katie Lynch and his acceptance of the Adaptive PE teacher of the year award. His speech about Katie was very moving. I really enjoyed listening to his experience of working with her and other differently abled people. After the keynote session with Dr. Passarini I attended our TA's presentation of Sepak Takraw. DJ's presentation was very organized and very interesting. I had a lot of fun attempting to play with the actual Sepak Takraw balls. I thought it was a great idea that he used TBI in his presentation. He set up different nets at different heights incase people didn't feel comfortable using the proper net height. After the Sepak Takraw presentation i went to the speed stacking presentation. That was a lot of fun. Most people weren't very good in the beginning but everyone seemed to catch on quickly. Overall i think the entire mini-conference was very beneficial to myself and my teaching career. I'm looking forward to attending more PE conferences in the future as well.