Lab on Monday 5/2

Lab six was the last lab that we had at St. Mary's. Throughout the semester I have learned a lot of different techniques for teaching children and maintaining their attention. Making sure that you provide examples of how to do different motor skills is important. Also giving children examples to follow, like saying that a student is doing a great job sitting there quietly will make other children want to follow that student. This is a great way to maintain attention in the class and help to set examples. This was a great experience and I wish that we would have spent more time at the school. Getting to know the children and provide games that they enjoyed was a great experience.

PED 201 on Prezi

Monday Lab 4/25

During this lab we had the gym group which meant that we were the group that ran the games to assess the students. The two things being assessed were the stationary bounce and the kick. The game that I had was for the kick. I ran a game called kickball soccer, which would have been a good game for a little bit older students. I modified it to try and target it for the students but it still did not work as I had planned it to. The kick was able to be assessed though so it did work for the purpose but it was still hard for the students to understand what they had to do.

St. Mary's 5K/1K Run

Attending the run at St. Mary's was an excellent experience for me. Being able to see how many people attend the run and were involved with it was surprising. Doing a community event like this run is an excellent way to spread to word about the importance of fitness and teaching fitness for life. Since I am a Physical Education major, I would really love to do something like this in my future when I am a teacher. Just being a teacher during the week is not enough, you have to do outside of school work that helps spread the message of Physical Education. Working outside of school hours can make people of the community pay attention to you and realize that you are working towards a great cause. Mrs. Obama's program "Let's Move in Schools" is just one of the many programs that are being supported that help show the importance of a Physical Education program. The idea that some Physical Education programs are not at the par that they should be is disappointing because we are trying to show students why it is so important to participate in life long fitness. However, if the program does not support and show the students how to do this the correct way then how can we expect them to actually want to continue fitness outside of school. Physical Education is such an important part of our children's life and we have to make sure that we are supporting and showing them every way possible to get and stay involved.

Monday Lab 4/4

This weeks lab theme was the PBS show Dinosaur Train. The motor skills that we were observing this week were the overhand throw and the catch. The games that were provided for the students to play were hard to see and evaluate these skills properly. Boundaries should have been set up that the students had to throw behind so that they would be able to execute the skill more accurately. As for the catch, it was hard to see the students properly do this because the throws were not very accurate so it made it hard for the other student to catch. So because the game was not very accurate in showing the students skill it was hard to say who was able to complete the skill better and what they could have improved on.

Our group was in the cafeteria this week, I figured that there would be more students to play games with once we got in the gym but we were limited with numbers. Many of our games that we ran were targeted towards a larger group of students so it was hard to execute them properly. I brought in a visual aid to help the students know what kind of dinosaur that they would have to act like but I feel like it was targeted towards younger students instead of the age group that we were dealing with. I still need to find and put music onto my iPod to aid in the games that we are running.

Lab on Monday 3-21

This week our lab theme was cowboys and cowgirls, we were in pre-k and we split it up so we had the students in the classroom and the another group took the students in the gym and we helped out with their games. This week I was surprised at how well the students were listening and taking in all the directions for the games because they were so young, they did an excellent job. I felt like all the students were all really involved with our games this week too. Our TA's said that we really needed to cut down on tag games. For the next time I am going to look for games like nothing we have done before so that the students are getting a variety of games and things to do instead of the same games with different names.

Chapter Three Presentation

Lab on Monday 2-28

This week in lab we were in the pre-k room which was really fun. They are really interested in what activities that you have planed for them and want to play all of your games. They are more open to play with you also, I was building Lincoln Logs with a couple children and they have such great imaginations. When we walked in though the girls were all coloring and the boys were all playing with Lincoln Logs which I thought was funny because they already have associated "girl" activities from "boy" activities. We did a craft where they would create "Sponge Bob" out of pipe cleaners, googley eyes, and a popsicle sticks. The students were really involved and all of them wanted to create a "Sponge Bob". It was hard for them to put the pipe cleaners into the sponge, so we would go around and help them out. Fine motor skills are still difficult for them but they do the best that they can. In the gym we played different games but it was really hard for them to do some of the games that we had prepared so I just did some versions of some tag games to keep them moving and active. At this age they need really simple games that can change quickly so that their attention can be kept. We all learned that we need to prepare more games with different modifications to keep them moving and so that we don't run out of games to play with them.

Monday Lab 2/21

Today was a prep lab because the students at St. Mary's have off. We got to practice our own games and get feed back from our peers. I think these prep labs are very helpful because they make us realize what games work and what games we may have to change up a little bit so that the kids can understand them better. Seeing my peers teach games really helps me also because it gives me ideas on how to get the children listening and engaged in what I am trying to teach them. At the end of the day it is really difficult for the students to get all settled down and paying attention to you and get them really interested in your game. If you play a game that they already have played within the last month they have no interest in it at all so you have to learn to adapt and be able to change your game very quickly to get the children to want to play your game. Calling the game a different name and having taggers be called different things and using different locomotor movements totally changes the game for the students.

Lab on Monday 2-7

This was our first lab that we got to interact with the children at St. Mary's school a lot better than the first time. We were able to teach some games and involve all the kids with the activities. My group was the Special Project group so at first we went around and organized the closest which held all the equipment. I think this was an excellent thing to do first before having to teach because I got to see all the equipment that St. Mary's had and started to put some games together in my head. After completing our task with the closets, we then went out and played games with the children. The first game was run by the after school staff and it was a murder mystery game, it was a very quick game, but fun. Then our peers were on the other side of the gym teaching their games so we went over and participated with them and got involved with the students. At the end of the lab our group had to come up with a closing game, song and chant. I was able to teach my game at the very end. I should have been a lot more enthusiastic about my game to get the students really interested in it, there are always going to be the students who do not want to do anything you do even if it is the best thing on earth. There were some students who really liked it and others who did not want to play at all. Then our TA did the song and it was shake your sillies out, we went around in a circle and just danced, the younger students were really into it while the older students wanted nothing at all to do with it. Overall I believe the first day was a success and was a great time. I really enjoyed interacting with the students and finding out what some of their likes and dislikes were. I am looking forward to next weeks lab even more!

Virtus Training

During class we watched this video that was on child molesters and children who were victims. The movie made me think about how anyone that your child trusts could be a molester and you really don't know who is one or not. There are key things to look out for that could indicate that someone may be a child molester, some of them manipulate the kids to believe they are someone they can trust and insure that when they are molested that it is okay and that they are doing the right thing for the child. We have to make sure that kids know that if they are molested that they can talk to anyone about it and shouldn't think that they were the ones that did something wrong. We also learned a couple ways to avoid being accused of molesting a child and making sure that we do have witnesses. Making sure that we are never alone with the child and always leaving the door open is a big thing. Making sure that we are not in the child's personal space and hugging them even if they want to be hugged we have to maintain the professional boundary and always be looking out for the child's and our own safety because it is very hard to prove yourself innocent after an accusation.

lab on Monday 1-31

In lab we started out by playing a couple tag games and other cooperative games in the rock wall gym. After that we went down into one of the classrooms and went over a lot of the paper work that we will need to use throughout the semester. We also made our lab groups and came up with names for them, ours is "Krazy Kangaroos". The class seems a lot of fun once we get into everything and I am really looking forward to selecting games for the kids to play and getting them all involved with the activities that we pick.

homework one.

Fundamental skill development is such an important part of my profession, this is because it provides a base for other skills to develop from. If a child never learns how to properly kick a soccer ball how can they be expected to perform a perfect corner kick. There is no way to expect that from someone, there are certain skills that must be learned in order to learn skills that are more complicated. An assessment is needed to insure that the child can perform the simpler tasks before trying to perform a harder one, this helps to make sure that the child will not be injured. In gymnastics before a child can attempt to perform a front handspring a handstand must first be mastered to insure that the child will not be injured.

The American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD) provides excellent reasons why Physical Education is such an important part of schools and why it helps children.
http://www.aahperd.org/naspe/publications/teachingTools/QualityPE.cfm

This website provides many good statistics and data for Physical Education.
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/physicalactivity/pdf/quality_pe.pdf

Here is an image from www.google.com showing one way to spot a handstand.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static.rockbrookcamp.com/files/2009/12/gymnastics-handstand-girl.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rockbrookcamp.com/blog/gymnastics&usg=__maoDNzhyZmVFSOAZZv6EoS2u2k8=&h=729&w=432&sz=120&hl=en&start=38&sig2=ryZqqyZDBsBq96D-pC3kBw&zoom=1&tbnid=iIHTeD6t8jiWbM:&tbnh=153&tbnw=79&ei=xidDTeDYGMOqlAfgqPTlDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhandstand%2Bspotting%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D643%26tbs%3Disch:10,1100&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=926&oei=pSdDTdmWBoK88ga_jpnCAQ&esq=3&page=3&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:38&tx=64&ty=86&biw=1366&bih=643

This is a young girl who performs the front handspring and she stresses the straight arms and the handstand before doing the rest of the handspring. The video is from www.youtube.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaX-ynEiFqc&feature=related

Went to Saint Mary's today and went around to meet the kids and see what we will be doing for the semester. I am very excited!

I am completely new to blogging and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing so I have a lot to learn.