A Very Merry Lab 6

          This week was our last week at Saint Mary's school where we had a Christmas theme for the children.  There were no specific skills that were focused on today so it was up to my fellow peers to come up with games that involved skills that we had practiced and played throughout the semester.  My group was the special projects group and what we did was decorate the gymnasium doors with collages that myself and my fellow peers made.  We did a nice Christmas theme with green and red construction paper and placed the collages creatively on the door and also wrote our names and a little thank you to the school for allowing us to have such great experiences there.
         One thing that I did notice throughout the semester is how much I enjoy helping younger children out.  I originally thought that older kids such as Junior High and High School was the rout that I wanted to go, however after the few weeks that I spent at Saint Mary's my view has definitely changed.  It is so fun to be around kids who are always happy and enthusiastic about just be active.  Rarely did we ever find kids who didn't want to be doing something physically active.  They may not have wanted to play the same game, however we could generally find some way or game to get them involved into something.  It can be a challenge sometimes getting them to play a game that you want to play, however I am a person who likes challenges and I would definitely enjoy helping kids with their motor development and getting them introduced to healthy active lifestyles that hopefully they could continue for the rest of their lives.  Effective Physical Education needs to start at the elementary stage and this is something that I want to be more and more a part of as time has been going on.

My Lab 6 Reflection

Thanksgiving Day Fun and Games at St. Mary's (Lab 5)

Most people in the world do not like Mondays because it marks the start of the week, however I enjoy Mondays because I get to go play and interact with the students at St. Mary's.  This lab's theme was Thanksgiving because it is roughly about a week away, therefore, many of the games that we created for the students revolved around that theme.  Our focus for motor skills this week was dribbling and kicking.

             

               When we were assessing, we looked at key things such as if the students were using their fingers to dribble, or were slapping the ball and also where the ball was in regards to where it landed on the floor and how high it bounced in regards to their body.  Also with the kicking, I noticed that a good amount of what we had to assess dealt with the opposite foot of the kicking foot.  My contribution to lab 5 was creating a game at the end for the whole class.  I decided on a game called Turkey Tag where I had two people it (Pilgrims), and their job was to tag the turkeys (other students).  Now since this was a Thanksgiving theme it is obvious why I came up with these roles and the name, however I wanted to incorporate the motor skills of the day as well.  I created the game so it had two helper turkeys which can help turkeys who have been tagged.  They have to dribble the ball around until they find a turkey in need (which will be gobbling to signal they have been tagged) and then they will put the ball on the ground and kick it to the turkey.  After, the helper turkey now becomes a regular turkey, and the turkey who was just saved is now the helper turkey.  I made it so they switch so that more people would be able to practice the motor skills instead of just two people per game.  Overall I had a blast again at St. Mary's and feel as though everyone in the class including myself is enjoying themselves, have become more comfortable, and have learned a lot.  I came to Cortland primarily thinking that I would want to teach Middle school to High School kids, however this class has definitely made me think twice about this because of my enjoyment with the younger kids has changed my perspective entirely.  It is a lot of fun and rewarding seeing kids develop and helping them do that, especially when you have kids who are so enthusiastic like the ones that I have been involved with!

My Lab 5 Assessment

Lab 4

         Today was Lab 4 at Saint Mary's, however today was not like the other days at St. Mary's.  Today was a special day that every kid enjoys at the end of October.  You know what I'm talking about, Halloween.  The kids were even more full of energy today than the past few weeks because the games we had today revolved around Halloween, thus making them more excited.  Even though it might have been more hard work to keep them settled down when need be, I enjoyed seeing the kids happy to play the games because I know how happy I was when I was their age and hope they get the same experiences I got.  I had the Pre-K kids this week so I had to observe another group as they created games to help us assess their throwing and catching.  The big things we focused on this week was when they were throwing that they made the T formation, stepped with their opposite foot, and followed through.  Also with the catching, it was important where their elbows were, if there hands were out ready to catch the ball, and if they could catch the ball with just their hands or if they needed help from their legs, chest, or other parts of the body.

           After the assessing, my group went into the classroom where we played games, read, and conversed with the students.  My first try at playing with a group of kids was denied when they told me that "They didn't want me to play" ha.  I tried to find out why and ask them some questions so that they might forgot or find a way to include me.  They were playing house so I asked questions of who everyone was and what they were doing.  One girl told me that she was making baby food and that she would tell me when it was ready ha.  I said OK and thank you, so I went to another group who was drawing pictures.  One girl was drawing a duck so I talked to her about that and then she asked me to draw an elephant, so I did so, and she found it amusing which made me happy.  After that, Ryan, my TA Eric, and I played a card matching game with a few of the students.  This became very popular and we got more kids to join as time went on.  By the end of the game it was time for snack so the kids had their cookies and milk.  After, one student wanted me to read him a book so I read him a few pages and interacted and asked him questions about the book until it was time to go to the gym.  There Julia had a spider web activity that we did and I introduced my game to the children.  At first the children didn't really abide by the rules of the game, however after a few minutes or so and with help of my group we got the game going, and the motor skills that I incorporated into my game were practiced.  By the end of the game, I noticed how some students definitely improved.  I think it is because a lot of them didn't know how to throw correctly, so we taught them how repetitively, and it got them in kind of a groove where they would just do it automatically without us telling them.  It was great to see the improvement!

My Lab 4 Assessments

Lab 3

       Lab 3 was a blast!  The theme for the lab was Sports, and a lot of the college students participated in the theme which was awesome.  I wore my Cristiano Ronaldo Portugal Soccer jersey which caught the eye of one student who likes soccer.  He came up to me and said, "even though I don't like Ronaldo, I still really like your shirt".  I thought it was nice of him to say and also got me to find something that I had in common with him which was an interest in soccer, so myself and another student talked to him for a little bit about soccer.  My group created the games so that our peers could assess the other students based on the skills they were to observe.  Ryan had a cool game where the kids had to get bean bags and then put them in the hoola hoop.  My team was the yellow hoola hoop and we did pretty good.  One thing that I tried implementing to them was counting, so I told them after every time we are going to count them to see if we beat the other teams.  My game was called Alligator Alley which revolved around the idea of the kids being in a swamp surrounded by alligators, where they had to leap or jump from rock to rock (polyspot).  If they didn't land on one, they could be tagged by an alligator (student with a green noodle).  If they got caught, they had to stay still on a rock for 5 seconds.  Two of the skills were leap and jump so I thought this was a good game for my peers to assess the kids on.

           After all the games, my group went downstairs where the kids had snack.  I found it funny when one kid started dunking his pretzels in milk.  It caught the attention of my TA Eric who thought it was funny.  Since he thought it was funny, it caught the attention of a little girl who then wanted to see if it tasted good, so she started doing it ha!  While we were down there we talked a lot about each others pets.  I learned one girl had 3 dogs and she told me a little about them, and another student had one dog, but he didn't like it.  All in all it was a good lab and I'm looking forward to Lab 4 with the Pre-K students!

My Lab 3 write up

SUNY Cortland PE Mini Conference/Leadership Conference

SUNY Cortland just recently held a New York State Association for Health Physical Education Recreation and Dance () mini conference where dozens of presenters, teachers, professors, and students from the central New York state area got together and attended or presented sessions that revolved around the theme of "How Exercise, Learning, and the Brain can Transform Teaching from the Inside Out".  While attendees waited in the gym for the keynote speaker Dr. Sarah Armstrong, many SUNY Cortland students and myself performed a flash mob titled "Cortland Rock", retitling the song by LMFAO "Party Rock".  Click the link to see the video!!    ( Link to Cortland Rock PE Flash Mob video )  Besides listening to the keynote speaker and performing in the flash mob, I attended three sessions.  The first session I attended was called "Active Health", which was a session taught by SUNY Cortland Professor Helena Baert.  The concept of this class was to incorporate healthy life skills into games which teachers could use to help their students learn more about healthy life skills such as proper dieting, hygiene, and exercise.  One of the games I liked was called plaque attack which was a form of tag where if you got tagged, you had to have one person who was a toothbrush and one person who was toothpaste come to you and then you were OK to play again.  I liked this session a lot because when I become a teacher, I want to incorporate more into my lessons about eating and living healthier and being more aware and educated about health.  The second session I attended was at the Exergame Lab run by SUNY Cortland Professor Stephen Yang.  I had a lot of fun at this lab.  The idea of this was to incorporate fitness into video games.  As many people know, a lot of kids do not get very good exercise, and sitting in front of the television playing video games doesn't help.  One area that has increased in video games however is health and fitness games for video games.  One game that I liked was a biking game where a stationary bike was connected to a Playstation where you controlled the speed of a car by how fast you pedaled the bike, and you steered the car with the handlebars.  Another cool game I liked involved steps that you had to walk on in order to play the Xbox 360 NBA video game.  It made you constantly move your feet while you were playing.  By the end of all the games I played I was sweating bullets!  The third session I went to involved Ipads and other Apple products and how you can find different apps to help with teaching and health.  Some of the cool apps I liked involved calorie counters, different muscle workouts, and a voice recorder that could record what you say and then type it.  All in all it was a great conference I thought and can't wait for the next one!
                         After that conference, I attended the SUNY Cortland Student Leadership Conference.  There I met multiple former and current PE teachers who gave presentations on different areas of leadership and how to help make yourself better in regards to teaching and leading others.  One of the sessions I really enjoyed was performed by former PE teacher John Smith.  He taught us several simple games that can be done to help kids with their flexibility, coordination, and teamwork.  I attended the workshop because I have always been a leader, and as a leader I feel as though you can always improve to make yourself better, which then in return can help improve others.  This I feel should be a philosophy of all teachers.  I would like to become an orientation leader here at SUNY Cortland during the summer and I feel as though this definitely helped me.  Also in regards to that, I am an aspiring coach and I believe as a successful coach you not only have to be a leader on the field, but off the field too.  By attending this conference I learned how to improve myself as a coach off the field because a lot of my philosophies as a coach in years to come are going to be not only teaching my students and players how to kick a soccer ball, or shoot a slap shot, but how to become better people in general, and hopefully one day might say, "Mr. Henrie really helped me out a lot these past years.  I learned a lot about life and how to persevere because of him."  This is one of my goals as a teacher, and hearing words like these will make it all worth while and be one of the biggest reasons why I chose a profession like this.

Lab 2

          Lab 2 was a lot of fun, full of interesting and exciting events that I was not expecting.  In the beginning of class I had to observe some of the younger kids and how they ran, galloped, and hopped.  Some of my peers came up with fun little games where they incorporated that they had to do these types of things and then we would analyze them and see how well they did each of them.  We each had a boy and a girl we had to assess, and with that I marked down whether he/she was doing good in that category, average, or needed some work.  After that my group went outside where we played with the older kids.  They had a big game of tag going which I joined in on.  We played for a little while then another kid decided he wanted to join in however for some reason tagged another person so it got a little confusing and there were two people it instead of just one.  This I thought was funny because even though they noticed something was wrong and would say it, they still kept playing.  After playing tag we went into the gym and I introduced my game to the kids. 

         Since the theme of the week was "Friendship'" I chose a game I called Chain Tag where you were only safe if you chained your arm with your partner, thus trying to incorporate friendship.  If you got tagged, you had to sit down and then someone could get you back in if they tagged your hand.  So I thought this was a good idea because you get a partner which could symbolize friendship, and if you thought you were going to get caught then you could find your partner and try to chain yourselves before you got caught.  This game turned out pretty good, it seemed as though all the kids liked it.  I was surprised because I noticed the last time I was there that there were two kids who didn't really like playing that much, however, they participated in my game which surprised me and made me happy.  After my games the rest of my group introduced their games and we played them as well.  At the end we had all the groups and kids get together and we did the Chicken Dance.  I hadn't done it in a while but it was like riding a bike, once you learn how you don't forget.

 Lab 2

Are games like Dodgeball acceptable in PE?

For many of us, we grew up playing the classic games like dodge ball and kickball in our PE classes and during recess.  I remember in Junior High one of the most liked activities played by boys and girls was 10 base kickball which was where my teacher set up six mats around the perimeter of the gym, and before you could go home you would have to have been to ten bases.  All the other rules of kickball applied as well.  Dodge ball was always fun as well.  There were always different versions that could be used to modify it a little bit, however you still needed the same skills in order to succeed in each one.  These activities can be fun, however, do they teach kids how to be physically educated?  How do you assess them in these games?  How do you set up lesson plans in order to teach these games?  Those are all questions I would ask because I don't feel as though they are acceptable in Physical Education.  For example, in basketball you could teach dribbling skills, shooting skills, passing skills, and rules regarding the game.
                   
With dodge ball however I feel as though it would be harder because the only skills are throwing and catching a round ball.  Also, the rules are that you either catch the ball or avoid it if you are being attacked, or you throw the ball at your opponent.  With that being said, you can basically teach the game of dodge ball in less than five minutes.  How do you assess someone in this circumstance?  If they make it to the last five left they pass?  If they can correctly catch the ball?  Sounds a little bit too hard for me.  On the contrast, in basketball you could see if they were shooting right by looking at where there hands were and how they followed through for example.  The only way I could see myself allowing games like these to be played was if I had a substitute and the lesson I was teaching was too tough for them.  However, I feel as though I could come up with a better list of activities for a substitute in which my students would be getting better physically educated and maybe not sitting "out" or on the sideline, instead of constantly being involved.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2010/5/19/1274280336557/Ben-Stiller-in-Dodgeball-006.jpg

Fundamental Skills, Assessment, and Health

Fundamental skill development and assessment are very important to Physical Education.  Many schools in the past have viewed Physical Education, or what I like to call a lazy version of PE "gym class" as a chance for teachers to take a break from their students, and often devote some of their time to lesson planning while their students can run around and play for a little bit.  Even as a child, I viewed gym class, and I'm calling it gym class because that's what I viewed it as then and now, because I saw it as a second recess because we literally didn't learn any skills or develop anything.  We simply played games such as tag, soccer, basketball, etc.  Those are things I played at recess as well.  We had competitions as well, however, how can you assess a competition necessarily.  Just because one person may win does not necessarily mean that they are physically educated.  That is why there are national standards which are put into place, so that students can be assessed based on how much they know about being physically educated.  One organization is NASPE, or National Association for Sport and Physical Education.  They created the National Standards for Physical Education which was designed to provide guidance for teachers who are trying to physically educate students (www.aahperd.org/naspe)  By having national standards, this then makes it easier for teachers to create curriculums and benchmarks so that students will know so much information by a certain time.  One way that this is done is on a scale from 1-4, 4 being the highest.  If the student meets all the requirements of a certain skill then they receive a 4. For example if the task is to properly serve a tennis ball, the key elements may be that they throw the ball high enough, put the racket in the back scratch position, hit the ball with their arm fully extended, and hit the ball 5 out of ten times in the volley zone, then they get a four.  If they most of them and can use a little improvement they might get a 3.  If they need help and can only do a couple of those elements then they may get a two.  If they get a one then they need to practice a lot more and are no where close.

                                                        
Because of all of this, it is important to start young and by having these National Standards we can do so.  Health is a big issue, especially in this country where a good amount of our population is obese.  If students can be taught how to live a healthy lifestyle then we can decrease this national epidemic.  Many schools now have students create their own fitness plans so it helps students understand the importance of  health safety.  I feel as though through NASPE and other organizations that PE is headed in a great direction and students now are attending more PE classes and not "gym" classes so they are becoming more physically educated than students of the past.

        vs.                            

(http://www.secsportsfan.com/kentucky-wildcats-pictures-video.html))

(http://www.flickriver.com/groups/anti-mcdonalds/pool/interesting/)
(http://alv0808.blogspot.com/2011/06/secrets-of-life.html)

Lab 1

My observations for Lab 1