Author: Lindsay Reynoldson

When looking at assessments in school, students are constantly worried about their percentages and grades and how they are being marked. This is no exception in physical education as students are constantly asking what they are getting and how they can be improved. In the new curriculum coming out for physical education, one of the changes might be to change the grades in physical education so that there is still letter grades but no percentages attached to the grades.This is a little confusing because teachers will still have percentages of the students when calculating their letter grades. So basically students will receive only letter grades on their report card, but if they care about their marks and want to know where they stand in the spectrum of that letter grade they can just go and ask their teacher. It does not make sense to do this in one subject only and I do not believe that students will be very happy about it. I understand the fact of trying to make school less about grades to make students more intrinsically motivated to do well instead of being extrinsically motivated to get a better percentage. This being said the world we live in you students and young adults is all about grades, therefore students will be extrinsically motivated. To be able to get into a university students need to have extremely high grades to be competitive to get into the programs that they want and the scholarships that they might need. I do not believe that removing percentages in physical education will change anything with the grading because as noted before teachers are still going to have their percentages.

During my two-week short practicum, I was introduced to many different students form different backgrounds. I found it interesting how there were not very many ELL students in my classes. This being said, I realized how important the LLED 360 class is and how useful it is for our practicum. One thing that I found myself doing when teaching was focusing on the language I use. In the discipline of physical education, I often just think, Oh everybody knows what this means, just because I have so much experience with the language. After taking a moment to think back, I realized that I did not learn about anything like Rate of Perceived Exertion or Maximal Heart Rate until I was in university. This being said, when I taught a lesson on Rate of Perceived Exertion, I really had to focus on the language I was using with my students. I often found myself repeating ideas in different words to try to make sure that everybody could understand what I was talking about.

Another thing that I realized about language during my practicum, is that the language you choose to use has a very big impact on how the class will run. For example I did a fitness circuit with a class one day. When most people hear fitness they do not get overly excited, therefore I tried to make it more fun. When students asked what we were going to do, I responded by saying that we are going to play this really fun fitness game using cards. I was surprised that by just using that simple word, game, all of the students were more excited to do the lesson that I had planned. When discussing this with my sponsor teacher after my lesson, she commented on how great it was that I called it a game and how important it is to make the lessons seem more fun and appealing for the students to do. Therefore, one of the biggest things that I learned through my two week practicum is how important language is and how you explain activities, what you refer to activities as for all students in your class.

Physical Education is an interesting subject to teach because unlike other disciplines, there is usually no textbook associated with it. This is not to say that students never have to read anything for physical education, as teachers will sometimes provide handouts or reference notes for students in order to prepare them for unit tests. The language used in physical education which appears on these handouts are often very hard for students to understand because of the different types of words that are associated with physical education. For example looking at the concept of invasive team games, the word invasive can be scary for some learners to see. It is important as teachers that we read out the handouts to the class and make sure that they understand what the words mean in relation to physical education.

One way for teachers to get students used to the words used in physical education is to have words written on pieces of paper around the gym with images beside them. This allows students to use see a visual understanding of the word which can help all students, including ELL students to understand what the words mean in physical education.By using these visual aids and by the teachers explaining the words out loud for auditory learners, students will be able to have a better understanding on what the words actually mean.

Another idea for physical educators would be to provide students with a vocabulary sheet that explains the key mortar terms for physical activity. Therefore, students will already have been introduced to the different words before they are used in the classroom setting.

One of the big topics in this week’s reading surrounded questions in the classroom. I believe that questions are really important to ask when teaching to be able to engage students in learning and to allow teachers to figure out how well their students are grasping the concepts. One of the key points that really stuck with me from the reading was pausing and giving students time to think. Reflecting back to my own teaching, I realize that this is a weakness of mine. I am afraid to pause because it makes me nervous, as I am not yet confident enough as a teacher to understand the importance of pausing. This reading really impacted me and made me realize how important it is to pause and let the learner reflect on a question. I believe that allowing silence in your classroom and not feeling awkward with the silence is a mark of a good teacher.

Questioning is something that I really hope to bring to my specialty of physical education, especially when teaching students concepts and strategies surrounding sports. Questions are ways for learners to think about the concept being taught and really focus on why they are learning something. One strategy that I plan on implementing in my physical education class from the reading is simulations. Because physical education requires students to move and be active all of the time simulations are a great fit and a form of simulations occur in physical education at all times as students are always moving through different sports and activities. If teachers are really able to focus their simulation activities, students will be able to have a greater understanding of strategies and tactics because they have personally gone through them and understand where they should be positioned for certain activities and where they need to move to next.

Chapter four introduces the readers to four different disciplines of academia where different language needs to be used. As stated in the chapter, it is very important for teachers to develop pedagogical content knowledge, and really understand how a novice learner feels when they are learning the discipline’s language. It is important for teachers not to lose site of the fact that their students are at a different level than they are, and that teachers need to teach to the novice learner.
Although the chapter focused on learning language for Science, Mathematics, Language Arts, and History, I believe that these concepts can be used in my discipline of Physical Education. For instance when teaching team games, cause and effect is very important to understand the tactics and strategies surrounding sport. An example of cause and effect that a teacher could use would be:

T: “Ok Jimmy, if Matt is advancing towards the goal line with the ball, where would the best place for you to move to as a support player?”
S: “I should go beside Matt.”
T: “Ok so if you move towards Matt, where will your defender go?”
S: “He will follow me.”
T: “Correct he will follow you towards Matt and the ball, and then there will be two defenders on Matt, his and yours. What about if you moved away from Matt towards the sidelines to provide width, where would your defender go?”
S: “He would follow me, and then Matt would only have one defender on him.”
T: “Exactly, so because Matt would only have one defender on him, he would have more time and space with the ball to look for the best passing option.”

It is important that when teaching, teachers use different cue words and specific language to help direct student’s thinking. Physical Education is an example of a discipline where teachers can use different language strategies to help students understand the concepts. As well as cause and effect, interpretation would also be good to help students understand what their opponent’s team is doing. All in all, it is really important for teachers to understand that learning language does not only happen in English, but it must be continuously incorporated into all subject matter.

After reading this week’s article and looking at some of the different blogs that have already been posted, I believe there is a little confusion. In the blog A Focus on Vocabulary, the author says that only eight to ten words can be learnt per week. The author did not understand how so few words could be learnt when students have so many different classes and life experiences occurring, where they are exposed to so many different words. After reviewing Lehr’s article, I believe that the blog author misunderstood parts of the reading. Lehr states that only eight to ten new words can be effectively taught each week, however there are other ways for students to learn more words. If we could only learn new words by being taught them, we would only learn approximately four hundred words per year, however Lehr states that humans learn two thousand to three thousand five hundred words per year. Therefore, students are able to learn more words through incidental learning, where they are exposed to other words through their own reading. The amount of words that students learn through this manner is indicative to the amount of reading and exposure students have to different vocabulary terms.

How the home environment affects children and their learning so drastically is a very interesting concept. It is evident that home environments have a big role on how children grow up and these environments contribute greatly to their personality. However, I never realized the role the home environment could have in a student’s classroom learning experience. Growing up in a middle-class English speaking family, I was exposed to reading and writing at a young age. Because my mother is a teacher, she was very articulate when speaking and that is where I learned the majority of my language. What I found interesting from the text is considering what would have happened if I went to a school where English was not the dominate language. Say for instance I went to a French school; I would not have had the background knowledge from a young age and I would not feel confident speaking or interacting with others in French. I am surprised that I never realized this before reading this chapter, but those who do not grow up in English-speaking houses, or home environments where they have not been exposed to stories and books, will have a much harder time in school.

This is an issue that teachers need to be aware of to be able to assist those students. Zwiers’ point about how teachers need to make the expectations clear for students in the classroom and how they need to teach students about academic English, is important to help students feel confident and comfortable in their school environment (2008). Teachers need to be aware of the different students in their classrooms and focus on students as individuals and realize what they need to do to help each student succeed.

These points are important when in a physical education environment since there are a lot of terms that not all students will know. For example, the term advancement; moving forward towards a goal line in a game, will not be known by all students, and teachers must explain the definition of the word before moving forward with the activity.

Zwiers, J. (2008). Understanding how students use language. In Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms (Ch. 1, pp 11-15). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass