Best and Worst Sports Moment

The best and worst moment of my sports career. The biggest moment in my life was full of excitement, but what happens next... Click here to find out!!!

The Final Day at St. Mary's!

This was the last time at St. Mary's this semester, and as excited as I am for the semester to be over. It's sad that I won't be going back there. I've learned so much from the students at St. Mary's that I don't even know where to begin! I'm glad I spent my last day with the Pre-k students. They are by far my favorite group to work with. They are so excited to just play and learn, it's unreal!


At the beginning of the semester I was unsure of what to expect, but as the weeks went on I became more and more comfortable with the students, as well as knowing the possible outcomes that would occur from my games or actions.

This week was so much fun, who would've thought that we'd be playing outside in December! I think this is a great way to get the Pre-k involved and active! Going out on the playground is great because they're in their element. They are in control over it, and the Teacher Candidates are the ones who were adapting. At one point, the students dragged me inside of the slide playground. I have no idea why I was getting dragged there but they loved every second of it, even if I couldn't get out!

Because we spent so much time outside, we didn't really have time for a craft, so we made the game and craft relate with each other. In order to decorate there Christmas tree ornament, they needed to play the game. After every game they completed they got another sticker to add to there tree. Although we thought this was a great idea, only some students wanted to play the games to get the stickers. Others just wanted to decorate the ornament. I stayed on the bleachers helping the students with there crafts. They were all so excited to color and add stickers to there trees. They get excited about the simplest things, and that's what is so awesome about all of them.

Although I'll miss going to St. Mary's, I'm excited to move onto more classes that will help me become a better Physical Educator!

Lab D- Broomball

When I found out that I was assigned the Ice Rink, I became really nervous because I haven't been on the Ice in a long time. Although I had taken ice skating lessons when I was younger, I was afraid that I had lost all my skills that I had once learned. I knew instantly that if I needed to teach on the ice that I had to start practicing on the ice, to become better. If it's one thing I've learned this semester is that practicing not only the skill that you're teaching but practicing teaching, and practice saying what you plan on saying. This is so important in the teaching world because you need to be able to know the skill like the back of your hand in order to be able to critique your students in the skill and to give them congruent and specific feedback throughout your time with them. I had been on the ice now for a few days, and although some of my skills from years ago came back. I still had no idea what I should teach for my final lesson. In this final lesson, we all had to tie in a health topic that Prof. Yang had decided for us. I was thrown Tobacco.

      After thinking awhile, I had finally decided on teaching Broom ball because we could be on the ice rink without using ice skates. I now needed to some how add tobacco and technology into my lesson. After battling many techniques I decided to make posters of healthy lungs and lungs after using tobacco. These posters would now become targets in my lesson. Now that I was confident with relating tobacco into my lesson I had to figure out a way to add technology. I couldn't use video games like the wii or xbox 360 connect, so I became lost for a bit, while my mind wondered.  I became excited about the idea of using the technology we've used semester. We're suppose to post almost everything we've come in contact with this semester on our blogs. So why not make a homework assignment to join a blog about Broom ball that I would create, and answer a few questions on it. So my plan was to after class, send an email to every student and give them access to post on this blog.

When trying to figure out what I had done well in this lesson, I came to the conclusion that I had pretty good visuals, along with keeping my voice clear and understandable. One of the main things I've been trying to focus on with each lab, is to become better at my keeping my voice loud and to keep good control over the class. I also believe I gave good positive congruent feedback, although the video didn't show it I made sure I did this. I tried to give as much feedback to as many people as I could, but it was hard because the ice was such a big area and it was hard to move around.

Sometimes its hard to watch your lessons, because you know you did things wrong and watching you do them and not being able to change them is something that is really hard for me. I became really flustered in the beginning, forgetting what I had wanted to say about class rules and etiquette. Although I had practiced this lesson multiple times in front of people I froze. Part of me believes that my head wasn't there that day. This particular day was pretty rough, and I had been in a bad mood pretty much all day. We are all human and we will all have bad days, but as teachers when we have a bad day here or there, we need to not show it like I did. By the end of lesson, I had become less grumpy it was clear, but I need to learn to put whatever happens before I walk into those gym doors out of my head so it doesn't affect the students, like it affected my lesson. I believe this was the biggest thing I learned from in lab d.

We're all learning, and adapting to new things in new environments and our goal is to become the best physical educators as possible and I believe that this lesson more then any of the others helped me the most. I needed to experience forgetting what I had planned, and learn how to put things out of my mind along with learning to adapt to the changes that I will be faced with on a daily basis in the future.

This semester has truly been awesome in giving me experience towards my goal of becoming a physical educator. I can't even begin to explain the things I've learned these past few months. Comparing my first video from the first day of EDU 255 to my most recent, I believe not only have I grown as a person but also as a teacher candidate. I can't wait to learn and experience more in my years to come!!

 Content Development
 Time Coding
Task Progression
Feedback
Transcript

Thanksgiving At It's Finest!!

This week at St. Mary's was crazy! All of the students were so rambunctious today! My group was in control of the kindergarten and first graders, which is the group that is getting judged by all of the class. I was excited to go today because it was the last group to teach.

It started off kind of shaky, when Matt presented his game. More then half of the students didn't want to play for one reason or another, which put pressure on the other teacher candidates, because we wanted to get everyone to play.

 We ended up running out of time, so I didn't get a chance to teach my game. I was hoping to go because I was excited tot teach my game, and I thought the kids would enjoy it as well. Hopefully, the kids had a blast with the other games.

Next time, is our final day at St. Mary's and although I'm excited, It'll be sad to not go back.

THANK YOU!

Trick or Treat- Can the St. Marys Students Meet the Skills and Techniques?

Halloween at St. Mary's!
 



This week at St. Mary's was really fun, but so crazy! The closer the the end came, the more and more excited the kids got because it was Halloween and they all wanted to go trick or treating. Today not only was fun but challenging because you had to keep everyone in line and well behaved during this chaotic time. Today was also hard because I didn't really know how to react with the older kids because I've never really dealt with that age group.

Overall it was hard to see where the students skills were. Both students were good at the throwing and catching sometimes, then other times it just didn't work. These kids were also hard to judge because half the time they just stood there. Once the Teacher Candidates got them going it became easier.

I can't wait to see what happens next week, when I teach the Gym group! I couldn't be more excited to see what's in store for me there!

Lab C-Korfball

In the beginning, I thought learning an international game that I had to teach would be hard, but in actuality it was a lot easier because I went in wanting to pick a simple game because we only had 10 minutes to teach. Knowing that I only had 10 minutes, I picked Korfball. I thought this game would be easy to teach because it was simple, almost like basketball. Almost everyone has played basketball at one time or another in their life, so I went off this concept. I first picked offense, and then narrowed it down to the passing/throwing skill to complete offense effectively. I practice over and over with my lesson, thinking I would breeze through this lesson, and do just as good as I did in Lab B. I was wrong, Lab C was a total mess.

I had a hard time saying everything I wanted to say, in the time that I had. I also became really flustered when I noticed that Prof. Yang had given Sarah and George blindfolds for the lesson. Although I should have expected that he was going to throw something my way, I wasn't expecting to be given a "disability". I was more then ready for people misbehaving, but the thought of having a student with a disability in my class, never struck my mind. I should have dealt with this obstacle better, instead I just ended up "degrading" the students, which wasn't my intention at all. I kept bring the fact that they were blind up, which was rude. I shouldn't have kept showing that they had a disability so I really need to work on that.

I also spent a lot of time talking,  a majority of my lesson was not activity. After completing my time coding sheet, this really stood out. More then 70% of my lesson consisted of me talking. I really need to work on that. The students need to be active and my lesson didn't really do that. Ten minutes seemed like so much time, but it really isn't. I ran out of time, and rushed through the activities that I did do because I was running out of time.  For Lab D I need to be ready for anything and everything that could be thrown at me. I have a lot to work out, but overall the more practice the better teacher I will be. I'm excited for more practice and Lab D, because I want to be the best I can be!