The thing that worked well in our lesson is that everything was connected. We had an idea that we wanted to teach skills for baseball and all of our activities were connected to that. For our Incoming game, we had the student’s practice working as a team, throwing, catching and pretending to run to home when they were done. They were able to transfer those skills into the main striking game. I contributed by coming up with the main activity, and finding ways to modify other activities so everyone was included. I think our group worked very well together and everyone pulled their weight.
I noticed about planning and teaching that there are many areas you have to consider when planning a lesson- does the lesson flow and does it have a purpose, is everyone included, are any of the games shaming games, is it safe for the children and how much time should you allocate for each activity. Since one of our chapters was about assessment, everyone in class was able to give feedback on what worked. We had to modify our last game to make it safer since some people slipped on the mats and people were running into each other. I think this was good because it helped us see what worked and students were able to come up with suggestions on how to improve it.
I noticed that all of the students were participating and seemed to have fun so that helped with the lesson. I’m glad we had activities that included everyone because you really got to see the skills everyone had and you did not need to be super athletic to participate in our games.
The things that I would do differently are pay closer attention to the safety of the children. I would have used softer balls and had them touch the mat with their hands or tap it with their toes instead of running on it. Also, some of my instructions needed to be clearer because some students were a little confused and the passing game would have been good to do twice since after one round everyone knew what to do. I think over all I learned that teaching a physical education class is very different than other lessons I have done because of the size of the gym and there’s more distractions for children. You need to find a balance to lead the class but also participate with them.
