Field Experience 13

CURRICULUM AND NYS STANDARDS
Friday March 23rd, destination: Elementary School 11:00am. In this reflection, I will be concentrating on the Curriculum and NYS Standards observed in this lesson. As for the K-5 curriculum at the school im observing, the students are experiencing a developmentally designed program of fitness and skill develop ment. I have seen educational games, and also a wide variety of motor skills and fitness concepts being taught! The more the students are exposed to at a young age, the more mentally and physical prepared they will be for higher physical education. 


NYS Physical Education Learning Standards
Standard 1 - Personal Health and Fitness
Students will have the necessary knowledge and skills to establish and maintain physical fitness, participate in physical activity, and maintain personal health.

• In the lesson that I observed, the class did gain knowledge and skills to maintain physical fitness, participate in physical activity and maintain personal health. The students gained knowledge on various tumbling techniques in gymnastics. These concepts from gymnastics can be applied to everyday living. Gymnastics mainly focuses on becoming more flexible, and being more flexible in life makes many everyday activities easier for you to accomplish. Also, being flexible reduces the chance of injury. 

Standard 2 - A Safe and Healthy Environment
Students will acquire the knowledge and ability necessary to create and maintain a safe and healthy environment.

• Throughout the lesson, students were able to respect fellow classmates personal space. When the task was at hand to work together to complete the 6 person human pyramid, each student worked together by respecting each others personal space and not complaining that they had to interact with other students. 

Standard 3 - Resource Management
Students will understand and be able to manage their personal and community resources.

• In the lesson, I did not mention any ideas on where you can sign-up/partake in gymnastic activities around in their community. So unfortunately the students lacked this information according to the NYS standards. 

Field Experience 12

MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Friday March 23rd, destination: Elementary School 10:05am. In this reflection, I will be concentrating on the management strategies that I put into place while I was teaching. To start off the morning, the classroom teacher always brings the students to the gym and they line up at the door. Then as my host teacher usually does, I sent them to sit down quietly on the alphabet on the gym floor. One student per letter (protocol). Thats the first management strategy I had in place for the class. Then I started off the class with their usual warm up related to the unit they are learning. The unit was gymnastics and I had the students practice the different types of tumbling. Then I moved right into the days lesson which was practicing tumbling for 2, 4 and 6 people. I divided the class up by students physical size, so if students had to hold another student they were able to without getting hurt. After each group showed me their group of 2 tumbling pose, I had them work together with another group of 2 to tumble for 4. After each group completed tumbling for 4 we moved to tumbling for 6 and I divided the class into 2 groups since their were 12 students. Then the students worked together to complete a pose that was illustrated on a poster that the host teacher had. Each group was able to work together to do the pose of 3 students on the bottom 2 in the middle and 1 student on top. It was great seeing the students work together to complete the task. This style of teaching can be related to guided discovery. After the students completed this task, I asked the class as a whole to set up their own obstacle course. It took about 5-8 minutes for the students to work together to complete their own course. Then I had the students go through the course one at a time (safety reasons) and while going through the course, they had to do at least three front rolls. The students loved this idea. After each student went through once, I decided to make it a little more "fun/exciting" by timing each student to see who can complete the course the fastest while incorporating the 3 front rolls. Students kept trying to beat their previous time. It was a great lesson taught. All students followed directions due to good management strategies set in place. 

Field Experience 11

KNOWLEDGE OF STUDENTS

Friday March 23rd, destination: Elementary School 9:10am. In this reflection, I will be concentrating on the knowledge of the students. The class that I observed were 4th graders. I taught this lesson with little knowledge on gymnastics. I actually found out that the students taught me a lot about gymnastics through watching my students. I started off the lesson by going over all the tumbles in gymnastics and I asked the students if I missed any tumbles and sure enough, the class corrected me by saying that I missed going over the star jump and also the egg roll. This showed me that my students were able to retain all the different types of tumbles they have learned in gymnastics. Also, one girl in the class was able to do a back hand spring! This was not on the tumbling list that they had learned but she knew how to do one, and quite well at that! I was really impressed on how much the students knew about gymnastics. I never had gymnastics throughout my K-12 schooling, so it was really nice to have experienced it from the teachers perspective. 

FIELD EXPERIENCE 10

REFLECTION ON LESSON

Friday March 23rd, destination: Elementary School 8:05am. In this reflection, I will be concentrating on the lesson that was taught. The lesson that was being taught this day was gymnastics. I actually taught the majority of this lesson, so in this reflection, I am going to focus on reflecting on my teaching. Being a reflective teacher is a great way to professionally develop into a great P.E. teacher. 
            The students have had gymnastics for about 4 classes. So I decided to start the lesson off by going over all the tumbles in gymnastics. I thought this was a great review of the skills for the students and also a great warm up. After we went over all the skills, I divided the class up into groups and told the students to create their own gymnastics routine. The students loved this idea/concept. The groups ended up having 4 or 5 students in them. After about 20-25 minutes of having the students come up with a routine, I asked each group to present their routine infront of the entire class. The group that was presenting did their 1-2 minute routine and then was judged by the other students observing. The observers judged by showing a number 1-10 on there fingers and also plenty of applause. I personally thought that this lesson went great on my part. All students were engaged willing to come up with a "sweet" gymnastics routine. I can relate my style of teaching from class today in the fact that the style I was teaching was cooperative learning. Students had to design a routine with complex sequences involved. 

Field Experience 9

CLASSROOM OBSERVATION
As I said in my last post, my host phys ed. teacher picked out a great classroom teacher for me to observe. Here are a few points about his teaching inside the classroom.
1. How is the classroom arranged?
The classroom was arranged with 4 big tables, with 4 students seated at them each. This set up was exactly how my 4th grade classroom was back in the day.
2. How does the classroom differ from the gymnasium as an educational setting?
As we all know, the gymnasium differs a lot compared to the classroom setting. One of the main obvious differences between the two is that, inside the classroom, students are sitting, while in the gymnasium, students are mainly moving around. Also, the classroom setting is much more quiet compared to a gym full of students learning a new physical skill. The classroom was obviously much more smaller than the gym at the school also.
3. How would you describe the classroom atmosphere?

The classroom atmosphere was actually quiet inviting. I forgot how eye catching the classroom can be with posters all around the room, stating certain topics, also there was one of the "old school" projectors in the classroom that was being used. In the lesson that I observed, all the lights were off due to the use of the projector. This here greatly effected the students in which all their focus was on the topic being projected on the screen.
4. What was the topic and structure of the portion of the lesson you observed?
The topic that I observed was adding and subtracting fractions. Examples: (6/6) - (4/6) = (2/6). The teacher first started out with adding/subtracting fractions with a common denominator. (easier) and then progressed into different denominators.
5. How would you describe the language and literacy levels of the students?
For the 4th grade students, I thought that their language and literacy levels were more advanced than when I was in 4th grade. I didn't start learning about fractions until 6th grade I believe. Some of the terms that were being used were; mean, median, mode, max, min, range, meter, centimeter, decimeter.
6. How did the teacher engage the students in the lesson segment you observed?
I thought this teacher was great with getting the students involved in the lesson. During the lesson I observed, the teacher put on a "magic show" about fractions. About how certain parts of a whole disappear. He also had students come up to the projector and make certain parts of the whole shape disappear. While this was going on, he played "magic show" music. He even had me engaged in his lesson! He used different shapes to show that they can be broken into smaller pieces that make up the whole shape. It was a great lesson to have observed.
7. How would you describe the social behaviors of the students in this age group?
The social behaviors of the students were your typical 4th graders. Many of the students were willing to answers the teachers questions by raising their hand. All students were respectful and I could observe that there was learning taking place throughout the lesson because students began grasping the concept of adding and subtracting fractions.
8. What did you learn from this observation that will help you teach this age group more effectively?
The classroom teacher that I observed was no doubt a great teacher. Some ideas that I can take from this observation and then add to my own teaching would have to be the concept of having a dynamic voice while teaching. This in return engages your students more in the current lesson being taught. Also, having a lot of student involvement is also great for learning. This usually happens for the majority of physical education students. Especially when students are practicing a certain skill as a whole.
9. What other insights did you gain from this observation?
One other insight I gained from this observation is that, I thought that the teachers idea of having a reward system for answering hard questions is a good idea for students to grasp the content being learned more effectively. When the teacher said that there would be a reward for the student to answer the question correctly, all of the students hands went flying into the air willing to answer the question.

Field Experience 8

COMMUNICATION WITH OTHERS
Friday March 2nd, destination: Elementary School 8:05am. In this reflection, I will be concentrating on my host teachers communication with others around the district. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the gym before the class was that there were 3 workers/janitors working hinges on the door that leads to the outside. Now my guess is that my host teacher must have noticed something wrong with the door and then communicated with the janitors in order to get the problems fixed. I dont know all the details on the door situation but thats what I observed. Also, I noticed that my host teacher knows most of the teachers in the district quiet well. He told me a great teacher to observe their classroom teaching, and sure enough it was an awesome experience observing this classroom teacher which I will talk about in my next field experience post! 

Lab 25 - Experiencing the Health and Skill Related Components of Physical Fitness

Health Related Components of Fitness in pictures ... 

Cardiovascular Fitness:

Flexibility:

Strength:

Muscular Endurance:

Explosive Power:

Agility: 

Reaction Time:

Balance:

Coordination: