As we delve deeper into the school year, I’m beginning to notice that so much of our year will be spent learning from each other. I’ve spent much of our PE classes just observing and learning. I take note of what activities my classmates have come up with, how they instruct and what is they are hoping to accomplish in the short 45 minute lesson. I’m starting to realize it takes a lot of work, organizing and thought to carry out these lessons. I use to think that PE was just a way of getting kids active, but in hindsight it’s really about building a child’s character, confidence, teamwork with others and physical literacy, and it’s up to as a educators that the activities we employ foster that.
My group lesson isn’t for another couple of weeks, but as I think about it more –there are so many details that I still have to fine-tune with my group members. For example, what activities we want to cover, how we want to divvy the lesson between our group members, the ways in which we want to instruct the activities, and how we are going to organize the class during the lesson. I only hope that creating and organizing lesson plans gets easier with time and practice. With our regular school visits beginning this week, a question I’d like to ask my SA is at what point does creating lesson plans become second nature? Hopefully they’ll be able to impart some wisdom that I will happily share with my cohorts!
It is definitely interesting seeing how the group presentations are coming together! I am also excited to be getting to ours after practicum as well even if I am nervous about it. Ashley, I see a lot of your concern as well. It takes significant amounts of energy, time and resources to make a well structured lesson. It would be nice to think that at some point it becomes second nature. However, I believe that for as long as we are learning and developing our strategies to meet the needs of our class, it will never be second nature. Take each teaching opportunity as a chance to inspire learning about oneself and the community as a whole and wait to see where that takes you on your own learning journey.
Ashley I feel so similarly to you! We are learning so much through each other, and it is apparent that everyone has so much to offer to each other. I also never realized how much thought my teachers put into my PE classes as a kid (hopefully). When I look back to my time running around in the gym (especially during my primary years), I didn’t see it as an opportunity to foster my fundamental movement skills. Rather, I thought our teacher was just setting us loose in the gym to burn off energy. With my intermediate PE classes it was more apparent when we were learning fundamental movement skills such as hitting, kicking, and throwing since we did more drills. I never thought PE class had specific curriculum it needed to follow, as I thought it was up to the teacher to decide what we would do for the block. I’m nervous to plan these PE lessons just as I am to plan all our other lessons since I really do feel unprepared.
Ashley,
You brought up something that I have also thought a lot about this week. I’m starting to realizing why teaching is such a difficult job. It involves a lot more than just tedious planning. It’s really important to think about every aspect of your lesson to try and understand why you’re doing it and how the students are responding. I think this applies to all subjects, not just PE.
I’m starting to get more excited and less nervous for my group teach. I think we can all be thankful that we have opportunities like this to test things out and be ok with failing before we end up in a real classroom!
I look forward to seeing everyone’s lesson!
Maymie