End of the year wrap-up

Well what can I say other than it has been a successful semester. Thanks to Dr. Yang for showing us the ways of PE, and also to his TA staff: Toby, Russ, Kristen, John, and Melissa. I have taken a lot of positive experiences from this class, and really feel that I have improved greatly from day one. Here I have a collaboration of pictures taken throughout the semester of myself both teaching and participating. I used Animoto Video to form a pretty cool slide show with a sound clip attached!
Also thanks for all that have followed throughout the semester and have a great winter break!!

EXS 197 Mentor

Throughout this semester I have spent some of my time mentoring a group of 6 new incoming PE majors, 5 freshmen, and one transfer. My job was to help them get acquainted to the major by coaching them through the lab portion of the class. EXS 197 has been a MWF lecture class in the past, but with change going on in our program we have exchanged one of those class days with an activity lab with the focus trying to have future majors refine any basic skills that may need refining. Also in this lab students are given a background of a few styles of how PE used to be, and we found out the those ways were not as fun as what we have planned here at SUNY Cortland!

As stated before, the students I T.A. for are new to the major so it was my job to really transition them into it, and give them a background of the classes we take, and that we are in a serious major, and just also a few tips on professionalism: appropriate dress, being on time, and communication skills, as well as some other important characteristics. This truly is a good class because I feel it helps kids to see what PE is about their freshmen year in stead of waiting longer in your stay here at Cortland. Throughout this year a few students were turned away from the major because of this class, and it is good that they realized that before they got into any real block class's.

The last few weeks of class were focused towards skill testing of the critical elements. There was a sequence of 11 skills that were to be completed one after another and each student was then accessed based on there ability to preform the critical elements. The goal was to have every student be at a level of about a 3, this would provide an adequate class room demonstration and that is something that could be easily achieved with a little bit of practice each week throughout the semester. After it was all done all of my students obtained an average of a 3 on all the skills. I was real proud of them because they put in work throughout the year and then in the end it paid off. Great job!!!

I will be looking into helping out with this class again next semester if my schedule allows it to, but if not this was a great learning experience for me and I am glad I was chosen to be a part of it.

LAB D- STEP AEROBICS

What a load off to finish the final Lab-D experience. There was a lot of anticipation leading up to this lesson and once it got under way it all started to flow together. I was assigned the topic of aerobics and in our small teaching groups (Rob and Mike) we each picked a concentration of aerobics and I chose the step version. Each lesson leading up to this final one was brought about specific points of emphasis and all were drawn together in the end. The preparation for this lab required far more time and planning then the previous 3. Also with this lesson it was good to be solely on your own as it was a test to see what you as a PE Teacher were made of. Another requirement that was to be met in this lab was to incorporate the use of technology and for my lesson I used music to keep the tempo of exercise up and also to create a good environment for the students. Also there was a Wii Fit station set up in the gym, and this was used as a means to reward good behavior and for students that were staying on task. To take a look at what activities were scheduled for the class check out my Lesson Plan before continuing on with the rest of my reflection.

Now getting into the bulk lesson, I focused on 4 specific steps that I thought were interesting and also were not to hard to pick up at the same time. They were as follows: A-Step, Corner to Corner, Hop Turn, and I-Step. I had a poster for each step that broke it down into its different parts, where to start and also listed were the actual steps. The way I had the class set up was that I made each individual step its own station and there was about 4 students per station. I went over how to briefly do each step and then from there I pumped up the music and let the students get physically active while I cleared up any questions or confusion students might of had. There was approximately 2 minutes spent at each station before everyone rotated on to the next step. Now this rotation part of the lesson is a part of the class that was weak and I did not really explain myself to well in the beginning so I balm myself for the increased amount of time in between stations. By taking a look at my Time Coding Form you can quickly see when students were changing tasks. In the beginning of class I thought of a good idea to minimize wait time and confusion I handed out stickers to everyone, which then decided your group for you so we as a class could get right into the start of the lesson. Though I did not think about the transitions between step stations before hand it was clear in the see in the video that time could have been saved if the issue was addressed upon the start of the activity. A way to fix this issue would have simply just stated the order of rotation and also I could have called out a locomotor movement or something to pick up the pace to avoid walking and kids dragging their heals before practicing at the next step station.

Throughout this lesson I was able to make my way around the gym to offer help and feedback, to most, even though it can not all be scene or herd in the video. Also the fact that this 15 minute teaching allotted time was our longest experience yet, it is still not really enough time to really get around to all individuals and give good constructive feedback to really help them out. You do seek out the kids with questions or that are really struggling. While looking at the Feedback Analysis Form for my lesson you can see that I was able to reach out to just over half of the class with feedback, but for the most part a lot of the feedback was skill and cue related which is what we want. Feedback that is cue and skill specific lets the students know exactly what they are doing right, and also on the flip side what they might need to do to fix/ correct a skill to get it right.

For an overall evaluation of how I thought my lesson have a look in at the C-9 form that I completed. As you will notice I hit quite a few of the points on the check list and feel free to evaluate me as well using this blank form while viewing my video. Thanks for reading and watching!!