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.