Friday, December 3, 2010

The State of PE

Lab 6, Merry Christmas St. Mary's!


The theme for the last week of lab was Christmas. The kids really enjoyed this theme ad were very excited to see us back there. This week I was in the cafeteria group. So it started out with me going downstairs and working with the kids I the cafeteria. Professor Yang brought a electronic game that Justen and I were trying to get the kids to play. They really liked the game but there was one big problem with teaching in the cafeteria. The floor downstairs is very slippery and the kids are permitted from running around.  This was a serous dilemma because we are trying to teach kids how be physically active but they can’t run around.  I understand why they shouldn’t run around downstairs but me ad Justen had to come up with away for them to get exercise. So we set up the game so they had to power walk, or just walk fast. Many of the kids kept trying to run but we had to remind them that the floor was slippery and that they could get hurt. After we spent about a hour downstairs we went up into the gym. There was a girl’s basketball practice on half of the gym. We set up a basketball game where both the kids and the teachers were involved. The kids enjoyed it while we were playing but eventually there were to many kids on half of a gym to continue. It is sad that the St. Mary’s experience is over. I had a lot of fun there and learned a lot about teaching. The time flew by when I was there. I would love to work there next semester or some time in the future. It was a really great experience.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Lab 4 make up, Merry Christmas at St. Mary's

This week in lab started out with the gym group doing parachute games with the kids. While they were teaching their games Prof. Yang had a student do some motor skills for me to assess. I observed and took notes on how well the students performed the movements. I was assessing two students overhand throwing and catching ability. Once I was done assessing the students I got to play with the kids. At First I was supposed to work with the special project group. This group was to interview, take pictures, and eventually create a newsletter telling St. Mary's parents what occurs while we are there. Because there were already 4 people in the group professor Yang though it was best if I worked with the gym group. So we just played parachute games with the kids and once that was over we did basic tag games with them. They are very easy to run and the kids usually enjoy them. I thought this lab went very well. The students really enjoyed the Christmas theme and enjoyed playing the parachute games. It is sad that there is only one more lab left.