I had an opportunity to teach the balance lesson that Maria, Sydney and I created for our P.E. team-teaching assignment. I modified my lesson plan to suit the need of my Grade 2 students.
First, rotating stations for different activities is eliminated. Since it was the first time for the Grade 2 class to participate in balancing activities, I had to provide detailed explanations to the students. Students were asked to participate in the activities as a class in order to spend more time on each activity and receive feedback from each other.
Secondly, from the original lesson plan, I only chose two activities for the balancing lesson. At my practicum school, one block is only for 30 minutes. Also, the gym is far away, making it time-consuming for students to get ready for gym class, go to the gym and come back to the class after the lesson. To ensure that injuries do not occur in the gym, it also requires a long time to prepare the class. Therefore, I chose to do two out of the five activities in the original lesson plan.
After the lesson, I have learned that a lesson plan is simply a guideline, and I have to be prepared to make changes if required. This is especially true of teaching a P.E. class, which requires more classroom management since students are in a larger setting. Thus, it is difficult to address all content of a lesson plan. I am glad that I tried the same lesson in the two different classes because I was able to understand the modifications of the lesson I had to make. One thing I should always remind myself as a teacher is that I have to be flexible and open-minded in modifying my lesson plan.
