All posts by taylor attrill

Final Blog Post – ABC Cohort

Wow, what a semester! It’s so weird to think that the PE course is over. This semester, we were thrown into the world oh physical literacy and education where we challenged our previous notions and idea. The group today on Nutrition and Health fully showed how to make PE lesson cross curricular. We showed how to not only extend lessons from previous classes and bring them into the PE setting, but how to make educational and engaging activities for our students. The activities we did today, like the health food race, and the warm up, were not only fun, but really brought in the knowledge of the food pyramid and how to make healthy choices. The importance of bringing in healthy choices and having that discussion with your students is super important in today’s society, especially since everything is digitized and processed. Incorporating subjects and topics such as the health food pyramid really brought the lessons and activities into context and helped everything to make sense. The presenters really did a fantastic job in facilitating the group and treating us like their given age group. It was a lot of fun to see another cross-curricular lesson and learning about healthy choices! 😀

Inclusive PE Post – ABC Cohort

After the PE lesson we had with BC WheelChair Sports, playing wheelchair rugby and tennis and basketball, I have a new found respect for those athletes. The amount of work and dedication it takes to perform those sports and not be physically or mentally exhausted is tremendous! My arms were so sore after the first activity. It was a great learning activity and experience as I would have had difficulty incorporating physically disabled bodies into the curriculum. I have always been an advocate for inclusion and equality so I always had the notion of making sure everyone was involved as the forefront to my learning and understanding. But I realized that incorporating people in wheelchairs in PE is a difficult task in order to not make it too challenging for them or too boring for the other students. The organization left us with great advice and knowledge as to how to bring every student into PE and to be physically active in their lives. They provided excellent resources and skills that I will use in my classroom now, and in the future as a well to make sure it is all inclusive. My classroom is going to be a place where all bodies of all abilities are welcomed and included in every activity. This is a personal and deep topic for me so I am excited to have this new knowledge and bring it to the topic.

Dance Lesson Recap – Group B

Today’s dance lesson was a lot of fun! I really enjoyed seeing the incorporation of technology into teaching and learning dance. It made it especially fun and interesting as todays society is so reliant on the usage of technology that we as educators need to develop appropriate strategies for incorporating it into the curriculum. This is extra important as our students now and in the future are so connected to their phones and what not that they aren’t receiving the appropriate amount of physical activity that they need. That is why I thoroughly enjoyed how the group this week brought in technology to show a video where we were able to follow and copy the dance moves on the screen. This allows us (the students) to remain in contact with technology while also doing physical activity.

Another aspect to today’s lesson that I enjoyed was how the group allowed us to express our individuality in respectful and creative ways during the dance routine. At first we all did the same dance moves, but the second portion allowed us to create our own routine within the original; almost a symbol of how we must create our own identity while involved in society. This made it really interesting to see how everyone put their own spin on the dance and to see everyone have fun with it made it entertaining (in a good way 😀 )

Overall, it was an awesome lesson 🙂

Group B – Post – Taylor Week 6

Today’s class was excellent! It was so refreshing to get outdoors into the woods and play a game that got us aware of our bodies and our actions. Doing such a movement based activity and the trust falls really got us working together as a team/cohort. It illustrated the importance of getting our students outdoors and experiencing physical education in an environment that is not contained by 4 walls. This allows students to learn outdoors and can be used cross-curricular (ecology, arts, etc) in order to explicate the importance of being outside. I remember being a student in elementary school and as soon as I stepped inside the school, I conditioned myself to be a focused student who didn’t run wild or play, even in P.E. It wasn’t until recess or lunch when we went outside that I let loose and truly had a good time. It was outside that I learned my mistakes and explored creatively and imaginatively and I believe that getting students outside is very important to foster growth, safety, awareness, and creativity. Not only does it do this, but as with our class, it builds community between the students and between the students and the teacher, and connects them with nature and the land they inhabit.

Week 4 – Group B – Blog Entry – Taylor

Today, I really enjoyed the team teach group’s activities. It was well structured and I had a lot of fun today. The warm up activity was a lot of fun because it got us moving and outside, but the teachers encouraged us to make it unique to us by dancing however we wanted. This allowed kids (or us) to express our/them selves in whichever way it’s deemed fit. Also, the way it led to the main activity was great as it was a smooth transition and easy instructions. The only thing that was not clear was the dimensions of the playing area I noticed groups were told different areas/boundaries which made it a bit confusing when we were told to switch partners. Besides that, it was enjoyable when they increased the difficulty to encourage us to challenge ourselves, but didn’t force us to do it. It was a very free and open-ended activity where they teachers did not make the students participate in any given way; there was freedom for the students to choose their difficulty level and own version of warm up while still being included. Overall, it was an excellent game today, with lots of encouragement that was not “basic” (you guys know what I mean) and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves by the laughter and giggles that I heard.

YAY GROUP! 😀

Group B Week 2 Post

At first, and from my experiences with Physical Education teachers, my understanding was that in order teach PE, you had to be experienced in some form of athletic action, be it a basketball player or triathlon participant, etc. This comes from my previous PE teachers being coaches as well of my school’s athletic teams; I have never had a PE teacher who did not coach a team after school. This fuelled my knowledge and assumption that all PE teachers were experts in some sport that allowed them to not only teach general PE, but also be the coach of their own team. This kind of pushed me into being a teacher in a weird way because it made me want to show my fellow students who are not as physically active or capable as the star basketball player that you don’t have to be an expert or perfect at a sport in order to be a PE teacher or athlete.

I am no expert in any sport in the capacity to coach one myself except for Quidditch, but that is not a popular enough sport to garner me as an expert in any way. I always knew I would have to teach PE as an elementary school teacher and that terrified me because I was no such expert. I was afraid of going into a classroom and being seen as a phony for not being able to be an expert.