All posts by isis-isabella wright

Weekly Summary – Heart Rate

Wow! Apparently I have a really high heart rate, all the time? I had no idea! I don’t want to google what this means and self-diagnose right now until the school year is over for the winter break. I WILL say however that I really enjoyed today’s group teach, that incorporated the use of checking in with our heart rate, and can see how this would be an excellent use of combining a science lesson about body systems with a PE lesson, and you could even transfer this to a Math class where we do the calculations for our heart rate, and a Language Arts lesson where we work our research skills for the body systems, or on storytelling about an individual involved in high intensity sports.

 

I really liked as well how there were three stages to the lesson, and we checked our heart rate after each one. This could be tied to overarching concepts such as change, personal growth, cause and effect, or interconnectedness. A really wonderful lesson you guys, and I appreciated that you used previous dance moves from the other class that we were able to remember and add on to. I think this is one of the only times we were able to tie two classes group teaches together to build on previous skills and I really appreciate you did that.

Isis – Movement Journal – Gymnastics

Hello all!

First off, thank you to the group who organized the group teach this week. If we had gotten Gymnastics I would have felt extremely daunted by the task. Which is funny considering I loved Gymnastics in PE growing up and was always unbelievably excited when we came into the gym and saw the full apparatus pulled out from the wall. I guess I just couldn’t wrap my head around coming up with inclusive activities for something I have always thought to be quite independent. I think the group who taught did an excellent job  not only of coming up with exercises that were great for large groups of students, and of explaining things slowly, carefully, and authentically as if we were actually young children.

I also thought it was great that the teachers were flexible with us coming up with new games or versions of how to do things at each station. We’ve learned time and time again how important flexibility is to being a good teacher, so them being okay with letting us tweak games as we got better at the fundamental movement skills was awesome.

I also liked that their games involved a lot of teamwork and positive reinforcement, and will most definitely be activities I use in my classroom with my students one day. Great job Sienna, Sydney, and Maria. Loved your teach!

 

Isis

Outdoor Education Reflection

We were SO lucky to have the weather we did for our alternative outdoor education team teach. I also feel extremely lucky to have gotten to work with Tiffany and Meghan on this assignment, as their hard work, passion and enthusiasm made it easy to enjoy both the planning and execution of this assignment.

I think the biggest thing I took away from this assignment, is that no matter how much careful planning you think you’ve done, it’s very easy to forget things if they’re not written down. Even though we had discussed amongst ourselves safety things like being near roads, and boundaries of the actual scavenger hunt, on the day it’s easy to get sort of caught up/overwhelmed and forget to mention every little detail you had in your mind.

This extended as well to our actual written lesson plan, which had many areas left incomplete and we were asked to resubmit. It really hammered home the point that the more detailed your planning is, the better the lesson is going to go. If we had remembered to write down the safety side of our lesson, we might not to have forgotten to say anything about it during our teach.

I must say, I was really impressed with everyone’s enthusiasm and willingness to put themselves out there, especially during our animal game. You are all amazing hedgehogs! We also realized that it’s important to be flexible and able to think on our feet in case activities don’t work out as we had expected them to in our head (i.e. giving some of the ‘animals’ that had been turned ‘vaccines’ so that the tag warm up activity lasted a bit longer). Hopefully we will get to do our yoga cool down activity at some point over the next few months, but if we don’t – please everyone just remember to take 5 minutes out of your day to practice focusing on your breath, and staying mindful and positive. Many people in our cohort are or have been sick lately, and I just want to reiterate again (I know I know, we keep hearing this) how important balance is. Sometimes just taking the five minutes to unplug, sit outside in nature and practice mindful breathing and thoughts is as refreshing as a good nap. It’s ideal we are able to get our students outside and enjoying the amazing air in BC!

All the best of luck to the next group in their team teach this week!

 

Isis

September 16th – Group A Reflection

I found today’s first group teach and instant activity/summary to really sooth any sort of anxiety I had about the class. This is due in a big way to the fact that both groups did such an extraordinary job, but I think I was also reminded that being physically active is something I love to do, and always have.

PE today seems to have come a long way since I was in elementary school, and many of the things I didn’t like about it back then are all things we’re trying to change or improve (hall of shame games, exclusion, favouritism etc.) on now, which makes me feel excited about moving forward teaching PE. I really appreciate that these sorts of considerations are valued now by PE teachers when creating the conditions and environment of their PE classes.

As I mentioned in my reply to Kate’s reflection, I also think it’s really kind of a blessing that it seems so many of us didn’t have the best experience in PE – many of us can empathize with students and make sure to avoid a lot of the issues that led to us having negative memories.

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