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.

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.

Just a Small time zygote

St. Mary's Bazaar

Last Saturday I had a chance to get more experience at St. Mary's. Me and some of my classmates helped out at a fund raiser at St. Mary's. Dan and I ran a basketball, and football station. The kids gave us blue tickets to play, and if they won we rewarded them with red tickets(which could be used for prizes). When we got there it was very slow, most of the kids had already played all the games and used all their tickets. I wish I got their earlier when their was more people there, but overall it was a lot of fun. I saw some of the kids from lab and they were very happy to see us and play our games. When the fund raiser was over we helped clean up and put stuff away. I really enjoyed the fundraiser and I wish I worked there for longer.   

Thanksgiving lab 5

Lab 5 was a very fun learning experience.  This week I was in the Gym group which meant that I had to teach my game in front of all my peers and Professor Yang. Right from the start of lab we had to deal with some adversary. The St. Mary's basketball team had practice after school which left us with only half of the gym. After this the 2nd graders were supposed to get half of our half. So when it was our turn to teach we only had a quarter of the gym. This is something that PE teachers have to deal with on a regular basis. The game I taught was Thanksgiving treasure hunt. I put pictures of turkeys, Pilgrims, and Native Americans under poly spots. Then I put Three posters up in different areas of the gym. The pictures on the poster board matched the pictures under the poly spot. When I said Go the kids were to run around the gym. Once I said find the treasure the kids were to dribble 10 times on the poly spot, look underneath the poly spot and then take the treasure to the matching poster. The game went really well and the kids enjoyed the game. The posters and pictures really got the kids attention and kept them entertained. If we had music it would have made the game a lot better but I still think that it went good. It just makes it easier to use music as a cue to start activity. I forgot to bring a Ipod so I had to use my voice to cue the kids when to start and finish activity.  

Thanksgiving Lab 2 make up lab.

On Monday I had to make up St. Mary's lab. I was injured when the lab took place and was unable to attend do to my ankle injury. This lab was one of the funnest ones yet. Lab started out with the gym group doing there games while we studied one students movement skills. The gym group did a great job, there were over 30 kids in the group and they really kept them entertained for the whole time. The kids loved the thanksgiving theme and were very excited to play our games. after this I went to work with the Pre-K group. It was a very nice day out so all the kids were very happy to play outside. We played random games with the kids. After playing outside we went inside were the kids ate a snack. Once inside Becky red the kids a nice book about thanksgiving. While she was entertaining the kids, Me and Andrew set up his activity. His game involved a boat (the mayflower) and land (Plymouth rock). The kids were to use the scooters to get from the boat to the rock and once they were there they were to dribble a basketball over to the side. There they would grab a piece of food and carry over to the table. It was a very fun activity for the Pre-k. I think all the kids really enjoyed there games. 

The importance of creating a safe environment and appropriate task.

Teachers can control two things when teaching. They can control the task and the environment. The environment should be safe and appropriate for learning. The task should put all the students in the best situation to learn. This week I was planning on teaching a relay race at St. Mary's. I always saw it as a fun cardiovascular activity as a kid. But I never really noticed all of the flaws with it until this week. One thing I didn't like about it was how it was a race. I didn't want the kids to get down on themselves if their group didn't win. Relay races really single kids out and put kids in a negative environment. I almost learned the hard way how important it is to have a task that will create a positive learning experience.
Another aspect of teaching that is important is to always being positive. If you have a injury or are just having a bad day, it is important that you don't take it out on the kids. So many of my teachers in High School would be in bad moods and just take it out on us as students. It is not fair for the kids, they shouldn't get in trouble and not be in a positive environment just because you are having a bad day. I hated High School PE and High School in general because of this. Some teachers would let there mood get in the way of teaching. I see it in college but not as much. I think teacher should always leave their personally problems separate from class. I had a personal experience with this; I recently broke my ankle and had a hard time moving around. This made it difficult to teach games at St. Mary's, but I had to overcome this and make it seem like everything was good. I had to smile, show enthusiasm and almost put on the front that my ankle was fine and that I could demonstrate enough of the game for the kids to understand. It just something teachers have to do, they have to always make a positive learning environment for the students.

St.Mary's Slide Show

St. Mary's Collage

Thank You St. Mary's!

What a SUPER day at St. Mary's!

This week at St. Mary's the theme was Superheroes. The lab started out with the Gym group teaching there games while the rest of the class observed to see at what level the kids were performing the desired motor skills. The motor skills we were to observe were leaping, horizontal jumping and sliding.  The kids had so much energy and really were giving the gym group a hard time. I think the gym group should let the kids run more to tire them out, because it is really hard to make kids slide, leap and do horizontal jumps when they have so much energy. Once we were done observing the gym group we split up into are different groups. This week I was in the cafeteria group. It was nice outside so we were never actually in the cafeteria. While we were outside we played kick ball with the kids for about 20 minutes and then we went back to the gym to teach are games. When it was my time to teach I decided to teach a different game then I originally planned. I planned on teaching a basic tag game but when it got time to teach I realized that the game i originally planned was for 1st and 2nd graders. Most of the kids in the cafeteria group were 4th, 5th and 6th graders. So I decided to do a game called superhero football which incorporated aspects of football and basketball. I think the boy's in the class really enjoyed the game. Next time I have to have a game that is enjoyable for both boys and girls. I have to work on speaking louder and making sure all the kids are paying attention when I am teaching. It was a fun experience and I can't wait till next weeks Halloween lab.    

Developmental Physical education.

Physical education is supposed to teach kids how their body moves, and how to control. With time physical education should progress and all your motor skills you learned at a young age, running, jumping, hopping should help you with activities that involve multiple movements. The physical education setting should be social and safe for the children. The main goals of physical education is to learn movement skills and enhance physical activity and these skills. It is also important to improve learning as a whole and contribute to growth as humans. My own physical education program didn't really do any of these things. Since I was in 6th grade we pretty much did the same routine. The same activities every fall, winter and spring. There was no flexibility and because of this my PE failed me.I think I missed out on some activities that I have learned in Cortland. We never did gymnastics, tennis, self defense, dance, or even hockey. Everyone hated PE in my high school because we did the same activities year after year. Even from this picture I found on the internet it is clear that PE programs have become so sports oriented that many programs only do basketball, football, volleyball and sports instead of mixing it up. This is not going to get every kid involved, what if you don't like basketball, baseball, and sports then your not going to enjoy PE. Needs to be more flexibility, have activities like rock climbing, dance, gymnastics instead of team sports.

Ways to make dodgeball a better game.

Dodge ball definitely deserves to be in the hall of shame of PE games. The game singles kids out, bullying occurs and at times there isn't much activity. I think at times kids are literally scared to participate in PE when the activity is dodge ball. I remember when i was in high school, kids would hide in the back behind kids cause they were scared. Another thing I experienced when playing dodge ball which i never liked was when everyone would just throw at one kid, even if he wasn't the last kid. These are the flaws with dodge ball, but I think as future Physical Educators we can fix some of the flaws and still have this entertaining game for kids.

 We discussed this in adventure activity last year some of the solution's we came up with are to first off have multiple activities for the kids to do, don't make kids play dodge ball when they are scared or don't want too. Another way to make it better is to play a gauntlet style. Split the class into 3 groups, have 2 groups line up arms length away from each other. have the students either side of the gym facing each other. So group 1 will be facing group 2, like a human tunnel. The third group will sprint through the tunnel, from foul line to foul line, this would add more activity. But instead of just throwing the ball, which could be dangerous have the kids either throw it underhand, or a fun solution is the kids can throw it as hard as they want but it has to bounce once before it hits the kid. This takes some of the velocity of the ball but still keeps it fun. One way to take away the singling out part of dodge ball is to make it so the kids have to throw at different kids each time, so every one can't pick on the same kids. I also think depending on skills the kid should be split up, so all the kids with good arms shouldn't be on the same teams, and vice-versa. Some kids do love dodge ball and I don't think they should be denied the game completely but the game needs to be modified to get rid of it's flaws.

Lab 1, Wow PE is fun!

I really enjoyed my experience in lab. It was really fun interacting with the kids and playing with them. The students had a lot of energy and it seemed like they were all having a lot of fun. The students skill range varied depending on age and gender. Every kid i observed seemed to have basic running, hopping and jumping skills down. The older the kids were the more advanced they were. I also noticed that the older they were the more they played sports like basketball and soccer where the little kids mainly play tag, house and a variety of games with action figures. I was a little nervous how the kids would react to us being there. When I first walked in I heard a few comments from the kids. They said like "who are these people.'' and different comments like that. But all the kids I had the chance to work with were very easy going and didn't give me a hard time.  I know that there will be some kids who will not be as easy to work with, i am excited for the challenge of getting them to do activities and have a good time just like everyone else. 

I interacted with a lot of different kids on Wednesday's lab. I played basketball with a 4th grader named Ashley. I played tag outside with Chris and a number of other kids who got involved once he saw we were playing. I also Played house with Sarah and some other young girls. It was a lot of fun interacting with all the kids. I played with more kids but I am having a hard time remembering all their names. Next class I am going to really try to remember all the kids names that I interact with.

When is it too young?

It is only natural for parents to push sports such as baseball, lacrosse on to their children at a young age. It has almost become a tradition to teach sports that we love to our children. Fathers just love the thought of having a catch with their sons or daughter's, it is a fun and enjoyable thing for parents to do. Participating in sports that involve using a stick could be detrimental to children if they start too young. Most children muscles aren’t developed enough to catch and throw effectively until at least age 6. Before using sticks in sports children should effectively learn how their bodies move and how to control their movements. Kids shouldn’t be so sports oriented at a young age. They need to develop and learn how to effectively move. Playing baseball and playing lacrosse involves being more coordinated and involves the whole body. I think it is detrimental to kid’s health to participate in these sports to early.
This article talks about what age children should start participating in sports.

First Day

Yesterday was the first day of PED 201. Professor Yang went over what to expect through out the semester. We took a tour of all the places where we will be working in park. Later that day we had a chance to go to St. Mary’s school and take a tour there. We learned where the equipment and other items are that we will need through out our experiences there. Past PED 201 students helped professor Yang give the tour and the also told stories about their experiences. It seems like it is going to be a really fun time working at St. Mary’s. I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to work there.