It was our last group teach for PE last Friday. I thought the group did an amazing job on teaching health and physical literacy. The instant activity of spelling out letters was fun and gave us the opportunity to be creative (I love the CITE photo Steve took). I was in Cheryl’s group for reading discussion; the summary was clear and concise, which gave us the chance to reflect more for discussion. I learned new information and strategies for facilitating health and physical activities into other subjects and I had fun listening to other people share their experiences. The warm up and the cool down were awesome; I can imagine grade 2-3 students would be really engaged with acting out as wild animals in the jungle. Also, this is a great activity to do a cross curriculum with a drama class! I loved the main activity and I was able to get to 13 out of the 16 stations. We all had so much fun; they must have spent a lot of time preparing for all those stations and setting up. I like how they connected different subjects to the activities at different stations, such as art, music, English and health. This last PE lesson was a great demonstration of how to do cross curriculum with PE and other subjects and it was very well taught!
All posts by Pamela Tai
movement journal – week 8
The two group teaching teams from last class did very well. I like how the gymnastic team included Halloween theme into their activities, and I thought it was very neat. As well, I thought the four stations were broken down nicely, and giving the instructions while we were all at the middle instead of explaining it four times at each station was very smart. As for the summary and discussion, our discussion in terms of how to create a safe and inclusive environment was rich and helpful for the practicum. For the dance team, I liked the warm up activity where we had to act like eggs, chickens and dinosaurs. It was fun playing and watching other people, and I think they did a great job using the scaffolding technique. In addition, I loved how they not only taught us certain moves but also gave us the freedom to create dances close to the end of their lesson. All presenters from both groups were enthusiastic and have clear, loud voices! Good job girls, I loved it! 🙂
Movement Journal- Week 6
Lexi, Brianna, Katy and Jackie did very well today for outdoor education. Their instant activity “Cite Possible” was very interesting and informative. We got to move around, interact with strangers and explore nature. I was in Katy’s group during discussion, and she led the summary and discussion very well. Instead of giving us a lot of information once, she used many questions to keep our attention and stimulate us to think about the textbook content. For the main activity, I loved all four stations. Katy’s lesson on Air was helpful; I learned about many properties or air which would usually ignore or take for granted. In Lexi and Brianna’s stations, we learned about the importance of team work and supporting each other. Finally, Jackie’s station was fun and meaningful, and it was clever how she tied it in with the aboriginal content. Making art with leaves, wood, and other objects from nature can be adapted in both primary and intermediate classrooms, either in art, PE or even science classes. Overall, I think the class today was very well done and helpful, and I will definitely use some of the lessons they taught in my practicum. Good job ladies! 🙂
Week 4- movement journal
Friday was my first experience teaching the group in this program and it was my first time teaching PE; therefore, I was extremely nervous. Even though I thought we were pretty well prepared, I was still shaking the whole morning before class. I lead the instant activity without really paying attention to what was going on around me. I still cannot recall what happened during that time, but according to some reflections, it went well and most of you had fun dancing.
To be honest, I was focusing too much on what I thought I should and should not do as a teacher instead of paying attention to my students. I was constantly thinking of remembering to say things such as “when I say go” before giving instructions, and reminding myself to speak louder. Then I was concentrating on not saying “you guys” and focusing on the time, because I was the time keeper. Reflecting now, I wish I had paid more attention to everyone’s engagement level and given some feedback during the activities instead of focusing so much on myself.
I really appreciate how Steve showed us how to evaluate one of our games and modify it for safety issues. The brainstorming for modifications was very helpful, I am glad we got to do this here in Cite rather than during our practicum. Our focus age for this lesson was grade 2, so I was very worried the games might have been too childish for grownups to have fun. However, after class, many people told us we did a good job and that they enjoyed the activities which was very encouraging. Thank you everyone for being so supportive! 😀
Movement Journal- Week 2
I thought the group who lead the “Target Game” on Friday did very well. Their activities were well planned and the timing and transitions were great. They also did a fantastic job of explaining the readings, such as the history of PE, and they came up with interesting discussion questions. The part I liked the most was how they demonstrated that games which use humans as targets, such as dodgeball, are not appropriate to teach in PE class. When Steve mentioned this last week I was very surprised, because as a kid, I loved dodgeball and had always enjoyed playing it. My other thought was, it’s just a game so why do we have to take it so seriously? However, from last class’s games and discussion, I realized that no matter how well the instructions are explained, students can still unintentionally hit people in the head. If this can happen with us adults, it will be even harder to prevent it in a younger class. Also, I agreed with the point mentioned that maybe we can just laugh it off when we get hit, but kids might feel bad if he/she is the first one out. Therefore, I liked the revised version our teaching group came up with. In the modified version, the targets were not people, no one will be out alone, and the underhanded throw prevented hitting people above their shoulders. If I have a chance to teach PE in my practicum, I will definitely consider using this activity in my classroom.