Before I start talking about the day, there were a few things that I thought about during this wonderful 3 day weekend. I sat down this week to write out my lesson plans for the next four weeks and complete my units. It was quite interesting not only because I was bopping back and forth between each unit, but also because of some of the decisions I made while doing so.
Two of the units are activities that I have never taught, coached or played before. Gaelic football is totally new to me. It was a little hard to write lesson plans for this sport because I don’t know the actual progressions. I did the best I could and I think I have a pretty solid unit plan. Secondly, the other unit is baseball/softball. I have played softball and coached biddy t-ball, but here it is totally different. I still don’t have a solid background in this sport as I do basketball, soccer, or track/field. Again, I think these units are written well enough to introduce the students as well as me to these sports. I am excited to get these units underway.
While writing the units and lesson plans, I kept thinking about everything I needed to include, how I wanted to approach the classes, what direction the students were going to be doing, is this something my students would like, and how I was going to assess the students throughout the units. While doing these unit plans, I kept asking myself will the students like this. How can I make this fun for the students and make sure that everyone is involved? Will the students be active throughout the whole class period? Is there enough equipment to do this kind of activity?
When thinking about the direction of the class, I asked questions such as what progressions will the students make through the course of the unit? Do I want to start small or just start large because I really don’t have a lot of time with the students? I sat down and mapped out how many classes I will have with the students from today until we are finished. I counted 10 days left. However, because I decided to do two units at the same time, it really cuts down there time in each unit to 5 class periods (this is pretty normal because the other teachers only spend 6 days on each unit – or 3 weeks). There is just so much that I can do with these students that only having 5 days with them on each unit seems absurd. I need more TIME!!!!
Assessing the students should be an interesting event. I have planned on giving students homework, projects, and opportunities to teach a portion of the class. I hope that the students take well to this kind of change. I can see the students rebelling against the homework and projects that they have to do outside of class. It goes back to making students care about their education. With the homework assignments that I have designed, I made it in such a way that I hope to spark an interest in them. For example, they will be asked to find definitions to different words that we will be talking about. I hope that by them looking up these words, they may find articles or readings that are linked to that word and they may read on. Through this, they will be gaining a better understanding and working knowledge of the word than for me to just tell them what it is.
I also kept thinking about how easy it will be on me. Do I have to get out a lot of equipment? Is there a lot of set up to be done? If I set it all up, how long will it take to get it all put away? How easily can this be organized while still maximizing the participation of the students? Some activities I turned away from doing because of my answering some of these questions. It really does influence the way that I choose my activities and how I teach the students. I know this kind of stuff shouldn’t affect it because you should teach the students what they need to know regardless of set up time, organization, and level of ease. With anything that you plan to do, there is always a way to make it easier and more organized. You just have to plan and do it. You will learn by trial and error and through experience. You can’t just knock an idea because of what you think might happen. If it doesn’t work, you reflect on that and make adaptations to it. Basic theme: Try it! Learn by doing.
Now to talk about today’s classes. I think I talk too long when giving instructions and feedback. Sometimes a longer instruction is needed, especially for the first couple of times we do an activity. When doing the benefits of physical activity, safety rules for the weight room, or eight principles of training, some of those things need to be explained so the students will understand them better. I don’t want to just hand the students a sheet of paper stating the rules and expect them to follow every word it says. It’s a way for me to assess their understanding of the rules when we sit down and talk about them for a little bit. Eventually, we will get to a point where the students know what is expected of them and little instruction or talking will be needed.
After we discussed safety rules and the eight principles of training, I let the students have some free time in the weight room to explore the machines and practice what we had just talked about. While they did this, I just walked around, talked, and instructed each individual student or group. I think that even though you talk about safety rules, the students still need to have that application. So since today we talked about safety, while the students were exploring the machines, I walked around and taught safety.
At the very end of the class I told the students that I teach a little differently than what you are used to. You will have homework and projects as well as leading your class through a warm-up or cool down. Of course, I heard moans and groans and one student saying “Miss, this is PE. We don’t have homework in PE.” My response to the class was this: “You are in school?” Nodding of heads. “Okay. You have classes in school, correct?” Again, a nodding of heads. “Don’t you have homework in those classes?” “Yes, but…” “Okay, and PE is a class so therefore you will have to do some homework.” “But Miss, this is an elective.” Some students took the homework assignment in stride and others were fighting to the end. I told them that there are only 2-3 homework assignments and they are very simple to do. One is finding definitions, keeping a food log, and creating a pamphlet on the benefits of physical activity. I said to them that PE class is about movement and fun, but we learn through doing homework and sitting down to think about the activities that we do.
I guess you can say that what we are trying to do is change the way PE is taught and change the way students think about PE. The students are going to be resistant at first, but I think they will start coming around to it. However, it all depends on what happens after we leave them for good. Will these teachers take a different approach to the way they teach the classes after we leave? As I developed the homework assignments and grading, I realized that it will be a lot of work for me in the long run because of grading the students’ papers, but it is okay. If it helps the students learn at the end of the day, then that is what I am here for.
Overall, the first class was pretty good. I even had a warm up run with the students as well. I pretty much had all of the students running the entire lap (minus a few stragglers). The students really like that we are out there and see it as a competition; they don’t want to get beat by the teachers. I also had a chance to talk to my cooperating teacher about how I was going to assess the students and grade them. I talked to her about my point system and she seems to be really cool with it. All she said is, “I will teach you how to input that into the grade book.” I really like how she is letting me do my own thing. While I wish she was more supportive in other areas, she has been really good with me being here and teaching her classes.
For the second class, I definitely need a different management system. As much as I hate being a teacher that yells and is continually getting on the students for their behaviors, with this class, that is what I am turning into. My first class and all my other classes are democracies. However, this class can’t deal with democracy (or at least right now). This class is completely opposite of the other class I had this morning. Not only are there about 10 more students in the class, but they are also younger, immature, and disrespectful (I can’t say that about the whole class, it mainly is a group a guys).
This class responded the same way as the first class whenever I told them they had homework to complete. It is going to be a rough next four weeks if I keep getting this resistance from the students for everything that I do. We were in the weight room today and I was trying to talk to them about safety rules and a lot of the students were just talking. I talked this morning about how I hated how the other teachers treat them like the army and yell at them to be quiet while stretching and warming up and here I was doing it to them as well.
The third class had an introduction to the personal fitness unit. I talked about my expectations for them over the next four weeks and what we will be doing. When talking about grading and assessment, they are also resistant to the homework, but this was expected so I can’t really complain. We continued class with a dynamic warm up and talking about the importance of warming up before activity. This class did a lot better on their first day of this activity than did the other two classes. They were more respectful and followed the rules of the exercises better. There was minimal goofing off and the students stayed on task.
I brought them back inside and we talked about the benefits of physical activity and exercise. While discussing these benefits, there were a lot of students talking to the person sitting next to them. It took me a little bit to realize that they were talking about how that benefit was related to them in some way or what they knew about it. At first, I was trying to silence them instead of fostering their thinking. Their talk wasn’t off-task behavior talk, but instead they are talking about pertinent things that are associated with a specific benefit.
Today wasn’t too bad of a day. We only a couple of more weeks left and has left me feeling rushed. What’s even more is that next week and the following week, the students will be testing, so we probably won’t even get to some of the stuff that I want to or give them projects to do. Oh well. Guess that is how the school systems work! Until tomorrow
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