Intramural Sports

This semester, I was the captain of my intramural soccer team here at Cortland. When taking up the role I had no idea how much work went into it or the leadership it included. As captain the preparation (even for intramurals) went far beyond what I expected. My first task was discussing the availability of games for the season, and when everyone was free. At the beginning of the season I also had to help prepare my team by scheduling a meeting to coordinate uniforms, numbers, and names. After this I went to order the uniforms, pay for them after collecting everyone's money, and finally pick-up and distribute them. Making sure everyone was prepared was important because if we were ill-prepared we were not allowed to play. Before the first game, I realized I had to find a way to communicate with all the players to let them know we had a game. In previous years, previous captains had utilized a facebook group to notify of upcoming games. As an infrequent facebooker, I found it hard to keep up with checking and usually found out hours before the game from others on the team. As a result I decided that since everyone had a phone I would text message to make sure everyone could be there and decide whether or not we needed to cancel. The text message method worked out great and I knew every game how many people and who exactly would be attending the game.

Throughout the season we played 10 fifty games and competed in the championship final game. The games themselves were an absolute blast and every game I found myself providing teammates with feedback and providing motivation whenever it was needed. Making sure everyone played and participated was also important to the game, and as much as we all wanted to play the entire game, there came a time to sub out. After every game, we brought the younger girls home who did not have their car with them. Although we wound up losing the final game the season was great and it taught me a lot about preparation and motivation.

Yoga Unit and NASPE Standards

The yoga unit was a very rewarding and informative process, as I learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. So how does the yoga unit match up to the NASPE Standards and information to be placed in my professional portfolio? Lets find out...

Standard 1: Scientific and Theoretical knowledge

This standard states that the teacher will not only know the knowledge pertaining to the course, but will also be able to apply the concepts to the development of the student's physical education. For this standard, a task card was used displaying the cues to the cat pose. Upon reading the cues and looking at the picture students were to perform the pose and assess their peers. In the end of the lesson we all worked together to do the poses as one group.

Standard 2: Skill and Fitness Based Competence

Demonstrations are an important part of being a physical educator and having the skills and knowledge to competently move and enhance the fitness of others is vital. In the yoga unit, it was common that certain poses needed to be demonstrated for students. Here is a photo of the students getting into the mountain posture during the Sun Salutation A sequence.

Standard 3: Planning and Implementation

As a physical educator it is important to plan lessons based upon local, state, and national standards in addition to having the needs of students in mind. This lesson plan was in preparation for the yoga unit and follows the NYS and NASPE standards while keeping the safety and interests of students in mind.

Standard 4: Instructional Delivery and Management

It is important as a teacher to have effective communication skills in a varity of settings. This can include demos, explanations, cues and prompts for the lesson. For the yoga unit, the use of procedures and guidelines for the students to follow and keep in mind througout the lesson.

Standard 5: Impact on Student Learning

This standard discusses the need for teachers to have effective assessments for students to improve upon their learning. The assessments used in the yoga unit were in the form of a cooperation rubric for the group work and an effort rubric for the Sun Salutation A.

Standard 6: Professionalism

As a student, it is important that I show my readiness to become an effective teacher through my choice of activities, extra-curricular activities, my ethics, respect, and my belief that all students can become physically educated individuals. In the yoga unit, I utilized the group work so that students could work with one another to guide eachother through the process. By doing this no one was left behind and all students could readily participate in the activity and learn the various yoga poses.

Good Morning

Just practicing using the hyperlink option!

Lab D

This past Monday I completed the teaching portion of lab D with my final yoga lesson. For this lesson technology was incorporated through the use of a Youtube video displaying different partner yoga positions. Although the display was smaller than I would have liked the students were able to get the idea of the poses from the picture. Also, the sound it the big gym was lower than I would have liked so I wound up repeating what was said on the video. From this experience I learned that technology should be rehearsed and back-ups should be around to fall on if problems exist.
At the beginning of the lesson students were given different task cards with various yoga postures on each and played a game of tag utilizing these cards as instant activity. These cards were used to show students other poses that we may not necessarily get to go over and later were used to split the class into partners. The dividing of the class using these cards with partnered postured made the transition to the next activity easy and free from confusion. The problem I did encounter however, was an uneven number of students leaving one alone. As a result I worked with this student as much as possible but had trouble being ass attentive as I would have liked.
Overall the lesson went as planned, but I forgot to mention the cues for the partner poses and therefore had trouble checking for understanding at the close of my lesson. Next time I will have to print a paper to carry with cues and reminders for my lesson as forgetting important aspects seems to happen often when I teach.
As with the past lesson I have included my Feedback Analysis Form that shows how the feeback given in this lab is not much different than the last, and I can definately give the students way more feedback related to the focus of the lesson. The Lesson Plan was definately an improvement over the last one, yet somehow I to add my name! The Time Coding Form shows a definate improvement in how my time was used by increasing my activity time. The transcript shows an improvement also. I sound much more comfortable teaching the lesson, yet I still need to work on decreasing the number of "alrights" used in starting my sentences. In all this lesson was an improvement to the last and I hope to see further improvement.

For the end of Lab D all materials were put together from Lab C to create a packet on the country and unit taught. To find more out about my Yoga Unit and China see the Yoga A, Yoga B, and Yoga C componants of the packet.

Scavenger Hunt.. ARRR!!!

In class on Monday we participated in a scavenger hunt as explorers. Each team represented a different explorer, ours being Ponce de Leon. The activity was very engaging and had very specific goals, and the things we were looking for were rather entertaining to search for. My favorite part of the activity was the use of the cell phones to direct us to our next target rather than just paper because it was something new that I had never seen or done before. I could definately see myself using this technology in a lesson because today many students have cell phones and this gives them a reason to use it in class for reasons they never knew existed. The entire scavenger hunt was lots of fun, and I have not participated in one since I was very young so the hunt brought back fond memories and a feeling of being young again.

The use of interdiciplinary teaching in physical education is a very effective way to engage students in the lesson. In this lesson the use of explorers, which is what I am actually learning about in my current history class, was a great way to help me remember their names and where they were from. This teaching method is not only beneficial to to the students in the lesson, but also to the profession as it helps add another cognitive aspect to the lessons.

Overall this lesson kept me moving from place to place with the group. The use of the cell phones for the next item was engaging and kept me interested in what was going to be next. By reviewing my heart rate data it is clear to see that I spent a great deal of time moving. I was oat my target heart rate zone for 43% of the lesson, but I attribute this to the time spent learning about the explorers during the interdiciplinary aspect of the lesson because my step count was higher after this lesson than it is many others that I have participated in.

Yoga Lab C

For the second yoga lesson I decided to try something new that involved group work and peer assessment. Students were grouped and given cards with different yoga poses and after learning them individually, they taught another group their pose. Overall I saw that this lesson was more effective than the first. Whether it was the interactiveness of the students or the teaching eachother the poses rather than just watching me as the teacher, the lesson seemed to be more interesting for the students. The lesson concluded with the entire group getting together to do the progression successively performing the cat pose, camel pose, and downward facing dog.
Next lesson I may find it more beneficial to organize the transitions of the groups from one to another in a more organized fashion. Furthermore, more upbeat music may also help the group become motivated than the slow music I had chosen. For this lesson I have included my time coding form, which displays what part of the lesson has been utilized for management, instruction, waiting, and activity. Overall 55% of the lesson was devoted to activity while the other half was split beteen management and instruction. Although I was happy not to have any waiting time, I do wish that less time was spent in management time.Also included is my feedback analysis form, showing who received feedback and whether or not it was general, specific, positive, or congruent. Overall my feedback was specific, yet more feedback could definately have been given to the students. By listening to the Lab C Transcript I realized my voice is a bit shakey and I could give a lot more feedback, as there were times when I was just walking around silently.

Ultimate Frisbee Unit

So after writing the script for my ultimate frisbee unit (based upon what I said in the actual lesson) I have discovered that I enjoy using the word "alright" in about every sentence!
By reviewing the lesson I was able to complete a Feedback Analysis Form displaying the exact feedback given to students during the lesson. With this information I discovered that in order to make my feedback during lessons more effective, I should be more specific in relating the feedback to the tasks and cues given during this lesson. During the previous lesson I only gave one specific feedback, while the rest was general and simply put, NOT HELPFUL!!! So from now on I will work on helping my students know their success and what specifically they have done right so that they can do it again.

Working on a classroom progression

Today we worked on the progression of ultimate frisbee from beginner on. There are still more students to go (me being last) and we must work upon what previous students have covered. Topics covered thus far include:

Back-hand throw through a hula hoop
Catching techniques
Pivoting to get around a defender
Moving to catch the frisbee as a receiver from a teamate
2 versus 2 in a small boundary area

As for what I will cover, I still must look at the final rules of ultimate frisbee so that we can move our way into game play.

Another topic covered today was test taking. Different forms of tests along with their advantages and disadvantages. Options ranging from true/false, multiple choice, essay, and short answer were covered.

Up and Running!

Today the blog is up and running!