Well, today starts my last week of student teaching. One day down, 4 more to go! While I am elated and relieved, how can you not be sad knowing that you’re going to be leaving the things you have established over the past 8 weeks?
The first class went pretty well. I had the students do student designed games today. The first class was doing the mushball unit and so I required them to design a game that dealt with using a bat and a mushball. It was quite nice to see all the types of games the students were coming up with. There were some groups that had to sit down and write and other groups that just got up and played. A few students were off task in the beginning and it was difficult to get them started.
However, before we started the class I had one student come up to me and say, “Miss, we are going to be changing units this week and we haven’t even played a real game of baseball.” I responded by saying “Yes, but we have played many mini games that are associated with baseball and softball and it looked like your were enjoying them just as much as a regular game.” It just gets me every time whenever a student tells me we are not playing the games right or even playing games at all. They definitely have not experienced anything but traditional based sports in physical education. I am hoping that by us being there these last eight weeks that our cooperating teachers will see that changing is not so bad and that they might have learned a few things from us.
The second class was really laid back. I took the first half of the class and did my dance lesson with them. We warmed up to the song “Hey Baby” and I think the students really liked it. Afterwards, we learned the Boot Scootin’ Boogie. It was a very simple country line dance. After this dance, I gave them an option on whether or not they wanted to learn the Cotton Eyed Joe, work on their dances, or go play in the gym. I feel pretty comfortable about having them play in the gym. This class has done really well for me that rewarding them with the free day wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Well just like in all things that you give options, some wanted to work, others wanted to learn, and the rest wanted to play. While the one group worked, I put on the Cotton Eyed Joe for the others to learn and dance to. After we did those two activities, we went out and a group played basketball and a group played soccer. I brought out the scooters with about 15 minutes left and had them play scooter soccer with a big exercise ball and scooter basketball with buckets serving as baskets. They really liked being able to play on the scooters. It provided a new challenge for them to overcome and conquer and with this being a very competitive class, it served to be a good end of the class period.
I guess you could say that the way I structured this unit was that for every genre of music I chose, there was both a line dance and a partner dance that the students had to perform. However, the disappointing fact is that I won’t get to my swing dance or multicultural lesson plans. The next two class periods they will be teaching their dances that they had created with their groups. It will be nice to see the type of dances that they came up with. There are a few groups that I am concerned about and what they have planned because they have not really used the time in class to practice the dance, they just listen and choose what music they want. It will be interesting to see what they conjure up. I am excited to sit back and learn them teach a dance they created instead of me teaching ones that I have put together.
The third class also did student designed games. However, this time I didn’t require them to make their games around the unit we were currently in (soccer). Things took off very slowly. It looked like nothing would get accomplished during this class period. There was one group though that completely had their game set and started playing within five minutes. However, on the other end of the spectrum, another group didn’t start playing until 15 minutes left in class. The majority of the other groups came up with a game, played it, went and changed it, played it, and changed it again until they got it the way that they wanted. This class also had some pretty good games.
I really like doing student designed games with my classes. It helps give me new ideas about activities that I can try with future classes in similar units. It really is a refresher, especially since teaching baseball/softball is so new to me and I don’t know a lot of lead up games. The games the students designed today are good enough to be lead up games for those future classes. I designed the two classes different to see how they would respond to structure and different set ups. I required that the first class design their games around the things we have been talking about and learning over the past couple of weeks. The last class of the day, I didn’t give them any structure. All I told them is that they were to design a game in which used the equipment in the corner of the gym. It didn’t have to deal with what we had been learning (soccer). I wanted to see how different each class would go about designing their games. To my surprise, the morning class did a lot better with designing their games than the class didn’t have structure.
There are different interpretations that I have been thinking about from these results. One, the morning class was a lot smaller than the afternoon class so it could have appeared to have gone better than the afternoon class. Secondly, the morning class consists of sixth graders and the afternoon class is a seventh grade class. I think that age level does play a role in how this all worked out. The sixth graders, at least at this school, still have a creative imagination. You can give them a general outline of what you want and they take it and run with it. I struggled with the seventh graders as far as this is concerned. A lot of the students kept saying how they weren’t creative enough, but I told them “Haven’t you ever played a game and wish it was played differently? Do that.” All they had to do was take the time to think about what they wanted to do or go and try it out and change it as they play. Thirdly, I believe that different groups of students respond differently to structure and no structure (as seen by our college group J ). A lot of these middle school students complain about there being too much structure and things being too regimented and they rebel against that stuff. However, as seen by the first class, the students did better under a structure as compared to that afternoon class that had no structure. Of course, age could play a factor in this as well, but it was just an interesting thing to observe today.
To change the subject, how do you stop a broken heart from hurting so bad? All I really want to do is just break down and cry. My heart is breaking for Ben and his family. My heart goes out to all these kids who might be going through the same things. I still can’t help but look at all these students and think about the things that they go through on a daily basis. There is a student who hasn’t been in class for the past two weeks. I came to find out that his dad was probably involved with a recent murder and he pulled his son out of school. This kid was a good kid. He was very polite and well mannered, but here things are totally different at home. People can do a really good job of hiding their emotions on the outside, but be torn up on the inside. I know, I’ve been there. My heart is also breaking knowing that I will be leaving pretty soon. If you figure out this answer, could you please let me know? Thanks! J
Until tomorrow.
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