Monsters, Crocodiles and Tag!

       By far my best experience at St. Mary's so far this semester.  My group worked with the Pre-K students and had a blast. First we went outside and played on the playground.  I played freeze tag with a couple of the kids until they decided to play red light green light.  I then saw that Mallory had made up a game with a couple of the girls on the jungle gym set.  The point of the game was to not get "eaten" tagged by the crocodile.  The girls seemed to love the game and always wanted to be the crocodiles. After a while some boys joined in to play and they were sharks.  It was a fun game because it worked on moving around on the jungle gym and taking turns being "it".  We then went inside and I read a book called "A Monster's Day at Work".  I picked out the book because it had a lot of great pictures and I figured the younger children would like the monsters.  When I was reading I had everyones attention and the students were asking questions throughout the story. When the story was over some students asked me to read other books, I probably could have sat there all day reading to them.  I thought it was amazing how they just went from running around like crazy outside, to being inside and paying such close attention to everything I said.  After being at St. Mary's this semester I know that I definitely want to teach,  I love being in the role model position in class and seeing the kids smile is the best part of the job!

Check out my lab five!

Dashing into PE!

Exergaming and physical education go hand-in-hand.  As a physical educator it is important to cross other curriculums into your classes.  For example, go around the school and ask other teachers what they are teaching in social studies, math, english etc. When you can include other subjects in physical education, students start using different parts of their brains to solve physical and mental problems. I would use the Hyper Blast to help my Pre-K students with math.  This game includes math skills and can get students physically active. The point of the game is for students to listen as the Hyper Dash calls out a number, the children then cover that number with the Hyper Dash and wait for a new number to be called.  This game can be used in physical education many different ways, for example races.  Yes I know students should not be standing around waiting on lines and we want students to be as active as possible but this is a great game to use if you are in a confined space (classroom, cafeteria).  Students can listen for the Hyper Dash to say the number four, hop to the piece with the number four on it, hit it, listen for the next number, skip back to the line, tell their partner the next number they have to find and go on.  That example has students using locomoter skills and  while incorporating math! The game also advances into addition, subtraction, multiplication and division so older students can use it as well!   Overall Hyper Dash is a great game for any teacher to use, not just physical educators.  This is one of the many different ways technology can be brought into classrooms and used to educate todays youth!

Future Yankees at St. Mary's!

      

      This week at St. Mary's we concentrated on throwing and catching skills.  My group had the older students, fourth and fifth graders.  Our games went over pretty well but it was a struggle to get the students involved.  The older students at St. Mary's love to play basketball and at first they didn't want to play our games.  Ryan, Mallory and I each told them if they participate in our games then we would play basketball after our lessons.  Luckily this incentive worked and we had about ten students stay and play.  I was pleasantly surprised at some of the students arms, they were advanced at throwing and catching.  Cortland must have a great little league!  

       We were in the gym for a long time with our students and it was nice because we had time to interact and get to know them.  One student in particular John, loves me and he listens to everything I say so he takes it upon himself to have his friends listen and follow directions.  I thought that was pretty cool!  While John was playing basketball he got upset because another student who was guarding him accidentally elbowed him.  I saw the incident happen and it wasn't on purpose so I took John and Thomas aside individually, and we worked the problem out.  I was excited we solved the problem and the tears stopped pouring out of John's eyes. Thomas apologized for elbowing John and our solution was that Thomas and John would be on the same team so they did not have to guard each other. When they started playing again it was like they were brand new kids on the court, they were both happy and passing the ball to each other!  It was a very exciting week at St. Mary's to say the least, I can't wait to go back in a week.  Solving Thomas and John's problem reminded me of summer camp and has gotten me really excited for this summer where I will be working at the Hampton Country Day Camp as a camp counselor!!

Be sure to check out my lab four!

Head, Neck and Body music video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z4C3COHVbY

Learning to Teach PE Like a Rockstar: The Sommersaults "Head, Neck, and Body" Remix

Learning to Teach PE Like a Rockstar: The Sommersaults "Head, Neck, and Body" Remix: Check out The Sommersaults "Head, Neck, and Body" Remix based of Chapter 8 (Rudimentary Movement Abilities).  Video to debut soon!

Slow start to the 2012 National AAHPERD Conference due to a power outage in Boston, but yesterday's Exergame lab was a huge success! We had a very big turn out and informed many physical education teachers about the power of exergames in the classroom.  Many teachers had PEP grants and were ready to bring many systems into their classrooms including the eye toy, iDance and an excellent interactive kick boxing game. I'm looking forward to the conference starting up again tomorrow morning and getting some power back in the hotel room. Stay tuned for more updates for the Conference!

THE GREAT DEBATE!!!!

The Great Debate started off slow and heated up quickly.  The Sports with Sticks group tried to bring up some points as to why children should learn how to play sports.  They brought up a couple of good reasons to why children should learn how to play sports at a young age but seemed to leave out the relation to physical eduction.  I believe students should learn how to play some organized sports at a young age but I feel that the decision is up to the parents of the child over the physical educator.  As a physical education teacher you may see some students only one or twice a week, three times a week at most for fifty minutes, you need to have the students physically engaged in all the activities in order for them to get the most out of physical education.  Playing sports with sticks most of the time requires students sharing equipment and waiting on lines.

As a board of education member we made a decision that the skills group should be taught in a K-6 grade setting and lifetime activities group should be taught from grades 7-12.  

At a young age children need to learn locomotor movements because you can apply all of the movements  to other athletic activities outside of the class room. Skills such as hoping, skipping, jumping, leaping, sliding, and running are very important to teach while students are young because they can apply those movements in other activities and sports.  Once a student hits seventh grade I believe teaching skills will get repetitive and they will lose interest in physical education.  This is where lifetime activities come into play.  When you can play activities in class that students can relate to outside of the class room it will encourage them to be active. Students love being active and are filled with energy, as a physical educator at the secondary level you did your job if your students are leaving class tired and sweaty.  Using games that require limited equipment that keep everyone in class involved and use skills mostly everyone had developed by the time they have reached 7th grade is important. 

The debate went over very well in class and everyone actively participated. I loved how it was live streamed to the rockstarpe blog and we were able to tweet about certain questions or comments that came up during the debate. It shows you that technology can and should be used in physical education setting!