This week at St. Mary's the theme was Dinosaur Train. Working with the Pre-K students has been my favorite week so far and I hope I get to work with them again. The lab started off with us observing another group starting up all the activities, which went well. The first game involved the students going through a "forest" and jumping over rivers. This game worked very well and it kept the students active and occupied enough to make sure that they performed the skills that were necessary. After these groups did their activities we took note and answered questions based off of a couple students.
Pre-K was a ton of fun and working with these kids was a pleasure. We started off with Dan reading a story to a few kids and a few others didn't want to read so they continued to play. I played legos with a few boys for a little bit, but they didn't seem too interested with me playing with them so I asked a couple girls if they wanted me to play castle with them. I played Lena with the castles and learning her name then later helped me when we did our game at the end. After the book was finished the kids had snack time in the next room and after they snacked they wanted to read a book so we did that again. After this book was over we went into the gym with the kids and I started my first game. The game went well, but after a few minutes the students started going off of the rules that they actually went by at first. Then they started to play by their own rules, but before this got out of hand the next game was set-up and we were ready. The last game went well and we were able to see the students perform the different skills. Overall working with the Pre-K students was my favorite group to work with and Dinosaur Train was a big success!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Childhood Development
Childhood development is very important and making sure every step is done properly can ensure that a child gets everything that they need.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Fundamentals and Physical Fitness
The fundamental locomotor skills are the most important and need to not only be taught but taught to the point that students are almost perfect at it. Skills like running, jumping, and hopping are some of the fundamentals and not knowing how to do these will effect other skills that are more advanced. Knowing how to do these skills will eventually lead to the ability to manipulate them into other skills like kicking, punting and bouncing.
Making sure students have the different kinds of stability (axial, static and dynamic) is important. Axial stability would include things like bending or twisting. There are also static and dynamic postures which would be rolling or dodging. Having stability is important and without it many advanced skills will suffer and the student will become stuck at one level.
Physical fitness can be broken down into two components: Health Related and Performance Related. Health related deals with strength, endurance, cardio, and flexibility. You want a combination of all these things to get through your day with enough energy to perform all your normal tasks and making sure you have extra energy in case there is an emergency. The performance-related aspect will make sure that you are able to do tasks at a high level and the higher your skill the easier your tasks will be. Some examples of this are balance, coordination, and agility.
Making sure students have the different kinds of stability (axial, static and dynamic) is important. Axial stability would include things like bending or twisting. There are also static and dynamic postures which would be rolling or dodging. Having stability is important and without it many advanced skills will suffer and the student will become stuck at one level.
Physical fitness can be broken down into two components: Health Related and Performance Related. Health related deals with strength, endurance, cardio, and flexibility. You want a combination of all these things to get through your day with enough energy to perform all your normal tasks and making sure you have extra energy in case there is an emergency. The performance-related aspect will make sure that you are able to do tasks at a high level and the higher your skill the easier your tasks will be. Some examples of this are balance, coordination, and agility.
Making Sure Children Develop Properly
Today there are many issues facing our children and we have to first identify exactly what they are before we can try to prevent them. Childhood obesity has been climbing recently and it has gotten to the point that the numbers are frightening. About 25% of children are considered to be overweight or obese, so one in every four kids is already at an unhealthy weight at such a young age. Ten years ago that number was only at 11%, in order to stop this growing trend we need to figure out why children are becoming more and more obese at younger ages before it gets too late and they suffer serious consequences. Another major problem facing our youth is violence inside the school area. Physical Education teachers can play a major role in trying to reduce this. Recreational sports and team sports in phys. ed. classes can reduce this and will teach students teamwork and working together as a team and hopefully build bonds. Early puberty is also a problem as some kids will start to develop 3 years earlier than their classmates and being alone without peers going through this can be hard for a kid.
There are many goals that teachers have through the use of physical education. The most important in my opinion is teaching physical activity and fitness enhancement. In order to stop childhood obesity and to make sure people stay active in their old age we need to teach people at a young age lifetime activities. This will increase their fitness at all ages and give them more to do rather than sit inside. Another major goal is to teach movement skills. Teaching different skills at a young age will enable the students to advance more quickly and develop more complex skills later at life which can come in handy if they want to compete in different sports.
Childhood development isn't based off of one factor. There are a few factors combined that all lead to this development. Biology will always play a factor in how a child will development and this can't be changed. The conditions in the learning environment is a factor and teachers do have a say in how that will be used. A healthy learning environment will enable children to learn and develop properly without any problems. A final factor is the requirements of the tasks you have the children do. If you have tasks that are too hard for a child, they won't be able to do it and won't advance at all because they will be stuck at that point. At the same time tasks that are too easy won't challenge the student and then they will become bored and won't develop either. You have to make sure your tasks are age-appropriate for all students and this will take some work from the teacher.
To make sure your activities appropriate you have to ask two questions: is it appropriate for the individual and is it age-group appropriate. Every students learns at a different pace and some activities may be more difficult for some than others. If a drill or game is too hard for one student, go back and see if you can make changes to make it more suitable for that specific child. P.E. should be fun for all students and being unable to do an activity is not fun! Age-appropriateness is also important. If you are teaching basketball you don't want to use the 3-man weave drill if you have a class of first graders, make sure your activities is right for the group or you won't progress at all.
There are many goals that teachers have through the use of physical education. The most important in my opinion is teaching physical activity and fitness enhancement. In order to stop childhood obesity and to make sure people stay active in their old age we need to teach people at a young age lifetime activities. This will increase their fitness at all ages and give them more to do rather than sit inside. Another major goal is to teach movement skills. Teaching different skills at a young age will enable the students to advance more quickly and develop more complex skills later at life which can come in handy if they want to compete in different sports.
Childhood development isn't based off of one factor. There are a few factors combined that all lead to this development. Biology will always play a factor in how a child will development and this can't be changed. The conditions in the learning environment is a factor and teachers do have a say in how that will be used. A healthy learning environment will enable children to learn and develop properly without any problems. A final factor is the requirements of the tasks you have the children do. If you have tasks that are too hard for a child, they won't be able to do it and won't advance at all because they will be stuck at that point. At the same time tasks that are too easy won't challenge the student and then they will become bored and won't develop either. You have to make sure your tasks are age-appropriate for all students and this will take some work from the teacher.
To make sure your activities appropriate you have to ask two questions: is it appropriate for the individual and is it age-group appropriate. Every students learns at a different pace and some activities may be more difficult for some than others. If a drill or game is too hard for one student, go back and see if you can make changes to make it more suitable for that specific child. P.E. should be fun for all students and being unable to do an activity is not fun! Age-appropriateness is also important. If you are teaching basketball you don't want to use the 3-man weave drill if you have a class of first graders, make sure your activities is right for the group or you won't progress at all.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Vancouver Comes to Cortland!
The Winter Olympics have been full force and the theme for the second lab at St. Mary's was of course the Olympics. The locomotor skills we were focused on watching this week was running, galloping, and hopping. In this weeks lab my group was to lead activities first and the other lab students were to observe. My game involved multiple stations with different activities that would have the students complete a locomotor task such as galloping to a target and back then throwing a beanbag at a target before moving on to the next station. The activity didn't go as smoothly as I thought and hoped it will, but since this was my first time trying I have a lot more time to improve on this. What I need to do first and most importantly is have my game set-up as soon as I arrive at St. Mary's. I tried to set-up quick but I had trouble finding the bean bags and because of the time I spent looking for them I lost time setting up targets and other parts for the activity, which kind of put me into a shock when it was my turn and I wasn't 100% set up yet. Also I should have made the rules more specific because the kids seemed a little lost at points and it got slightly chaotic at times. With all this happening now I know what I'll need to do in the future in order to improve my activities and lessons and I'll be able to run it all much smoother so I don't feel defeated at all. Overall this week was a great learning experience for me and I'm excited for next week's Dinosaur Train theme.
We also were assigned to watch two students, observe and take note of their skills for the gallop, run, and hop. The first thing I had to do when making sure the students hopped was to make suer they knew what each of the skills were. They all knew how to run and with slight help the gallop was done, but they didn't all know what a hop was technically, because of the idea that a bunny hops. A hop is a movement of elevation from one foot to another and is not done on two feet, so we had to make sure the students were aware of that when we played the games.
We also were assigned to watch two students, observe and take note of their skills for the gallop, run, and hop. The first thing I had to do when making sure the students hopped was to make suer they knew what each of the skills were. They all knew how to run and with slight help the gallop was done, but they didn't all know what a hop was technically, because of the idea that a bunny hops. A hop is a movement of elevation from one foot to another and is not done on two feet, so we had to make sure the students were aware of that when we played the games.
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