Easter at St. Mary's

This weeks theme was Easter at St. Mary's. I was assigned to the Pre-K group for the first time. After working with them, I soon realized that they were my favorite age to work with. They are much more easy-going than any other group so far. As long as you're energetic and try to play with them, both you and the students will have a lot of fun.

As for the assessing, we worked on dribbling a basketball and kicking a soccer ball and came up with some pretty good information that can be seen here.

The Importance of Music In Phys. Ed.

With todays schools becoming more and more technologically advanced it's important to keep up with the times.  There is a lot of specific ways that you can incorporate technology but I'm to focus on music incorporating music into ones curriculum. I quickly learned from my experiences at St. Mary's that music can be vital to controlling a class. However, music is also important in ways that it helps students express themselves. This is why I believe that dance should be taught throughout physical education programs throughout the nation. This not only expands students horizons on music that isn't played on radio stations, but also teaches rhythm to students at a young age which can come in handy in several life experiences such as most sports and also any other situation where you might need to cut the rug. 

St. Mary's Lab 4 (Object Control Skills)

When we visited St. Mary's the children seemed to have an extra amount energy that is always nice, but is partially harder to control. Since I was a part of the special projects group I got to observe the other student in our Motor Development class, and that's when I realized that on some days even the best attitudes and best techniques don't work. It is important to perceive that everything is going to plan and just keep a good attitude and not let the children get you down. After a while the children did start to participate. This opportunity gave us nice chance to record some good data regarding the overhand throw and catch. The 2 children being studied were Oscar, a 6 year old and Beth, also a 6 year old. I was later informed that Oscar is currently playing in the local little league, and needless to say, he was rather talented for his age. On the other hand, it was obvious that Beth had never really dabbled in baseball or softball. A full chart of the skills recorded can be seen here.

The Importance of Standardizing Physical Education

There needs to be a nation-wide standard for physical education. I went to a presentation on why it should be standardized last semester and the presentor brought up a bunch point that really made me think. The first thing that the man said was about how every department of education has a national standard execpt for physical education. Math, science, social studies, english, etc. all have have measurable tests that make sure the students are learning what they're supposed to. As for physical education, the measuring of skills is mostly subjective and needs to move more towards the area of objective measuring. Some fields that we can measure are can be how many push-ups a student can do, or how far a student can throw a ball. Since students can come from very different athletic backgrounds, I believe the best way to measure the students talents is through progressions. The first day of class should dedicated to pre-testing the students. The rest of the classes should be dedicated to improving all the skills tested. Then the last day of class should be dedicated to post-testing all of the skills. Then based on the progressions made in each skill tested that is how the student will be graded. This is just a rough outline, but I do believe this is the direction in which physical education should be going.

Old West Meets St. Mary's

This week's theme at St. Marys was a Western Theme with Cowboys and Cowgirls. This was also the first time I actually went in front of the students and taught. This what quite an experience and I really didn't know what to expect. The game I attempted teach was a variation of temple tag. Instead of having a temple, I was going to make the students form into a clock tower seen in the downtown of the average western town in the old western movies. However, once the student found out the game was essentially Temple Tag, they lost all attention to what I had to say and just wanted to pay, so rather than boring them, I just let them go out and play. Half way through the game I made to them switch to skipping and the leaping after that by making them jump over each black line on the basketball court. They seemed to enjoy the game and it got them some good exercise.

To see the lab document click here.

Chapter 3 Power Point

Cartoon Week at St. Marys

This was a fun week at St. Marys. Although there wasn't enough time for our entire group to go, I still observed a lot of great teaching techniques and did a lot of vicarious learning through some not-so-good teaching techniques. The game I had planned was 'Temple Tag', but I related it some of the temples seen in the cartoon 'Johnny Quest'. There was a lot of action going on in the gymnasium as always and we got a lot of good feedback information with the children that were chosen to be evaluated. The boy and girl did each skill up to our standard and had a lot of fun doing it. After our gym time, we moved down to the cafeteria and had some good conversations and experienced a lot of behavioral trends within the students. In fact, I was even lucky enough to get invited to Lexi's birthday party, I just glad I got my invitation 2 months in advances. It was definitely a good day at St. Mary's and I learned a lot of good techniques that I will use in future visits to there.

Our lab evaluation also had some good information and can be seen here.

Cowboys and Outlaws Lab

During our last pre-lab meeting we dicussed the topic that is our upcoming lab at St. Marys. Since we have decided that our theme is going to Western, with sheriffs and cowboys, I had to adapt one of my games to this theme. I started out with Sailors and Sharks, but I changed the title to Sherrifs and Cowboys and kept the concepts the same. I believe this game will be well liked by the students because I remember playing a variation of a game like this when I was in school, and it was one of my favorites. Even though this isn't our next lab, I am still really looking forward to it.
                                  
Hopefully this time however, i'll have not just a red golf shirt, but a cortland one as well.

Supersize Me

In one of my classes we were watching the film Supersize Me, which I am sure you are all familar with. This movie takes an interesting look at the obesity trends of youth in America. I've seen the film several times, but this as a now physical education, I noticed an interesting part within the film that dealt with physical education. In this part of the film they looked at two particular phys. ed. programs throughout the nation.

                                  

The first program was in a mid-western middle that had facilities similar to that of the Tolmek facility on Cortland's campus. This one of the most well-run phys. ed. programs in the nation, and showed with their students being significantly under the nations average for obesity. This school was really doing things right. On the other hand, the film looked at another program that was the exact opposite. This program only one gymnasium and students only met for physical education once at week. This school also had extremely unhealthy lunch, and these tow factors really showed within the student population as far as obesity went. These are just two looks at how physical education can be, and should be, and the sad thing is that when it's done wrong, it's the children who are affected.

St. Marys

This was our second time visiting St. Marys School in downtown Cortland and was definitely  memorable experience. My group was stationed to the cafeteria where we intermingled with the students and got to know them on a personal level. This will not be the type of work one would normally do in a physical education setting, however it is still important to get experience getting to know the students and learning how to connect with them. While in the cafeteria I played various board games with the kids. I also learned from Michael that the rule for connect four is tie goes to the student. After time in the cafeteria we moved up to the gymnasium and played along with the students. And for a lucky number of us, we got some professional training on how to jump rope properly by Kasey. As well as playing jump rope, we played different basketball games and also some soccer. Even though the lab was two hours long the time flew by. Definitely another awesome experience at St. Mary's School.

New Food Pyramid

With the FDA coming out with a new food pyramid it is imperative for students to become aware these changes. I think the best class for students to find out about these is in a physical education setting. In an effort to help students aware and practice healthy eating habits you can incorporate this information into various games. For example, you could have a tag game in which some students are sugars, fats and candy's, and other students can be various fruits and vegetables of there own choice and when you get tagged you switch over to the opposite food group. This is a good opportunity to help explain good and bad foods to children and make them aware of the food pyramid make healthy choices at young ages. This following link is to the FDA's official website and gives some interesting information regrading the food pyramid http://www.mypyramid.gov/.

Skill Development Fundamentals

Being a future physical education teacher, basic motor skills  are imperative for many reasons. The motor domain is important to teachers because it offers teachers away to standardize the physical education field by measuring basic motor skills such as throwing a ball or kicking a soccer ball.

The cognitive domain is important because this area helps our future students comprehend the skills they will eventually be tested on. This area is also important because children are multi sensory learners and require more the doing an activity over and over again to learn it. The affective domain is important because it teaches skill to children that they will not only need in a physical education class, but skills that will become important throughout the rest of their lives. This domain teaches children to act, interact, and react with other people as well as with themselves, a skill necessary in all walks of life.
The following link is website that briefly describes all of the domains I have just talked about http://physicaleducationresources.co.uk/learningdomainsbloomaffectivecognitivepsychomotor.aspx

Winter Break Experiences

Over this winter break I spent the entire month of January up at Cortland's campus because I am a member of the men's varsity basketball team at Cortland. Over the break I became a better by putting in the extra hours and really committing myself to one common goal. As well as playing basketball I also visit a youth detention center along with other members of my team were we arrange some basketball drills for them to play and just interact and get to know them on a personal level. It definitely was an eye-opening experience.