This week we learned about Striking and Batting games through Jennie, Carrie and Travis’ group teach. I am completely blown away by their lesson, it really set the bar for the upcoming groups. From start to finish they kept the group engaged with alternative ways of getting through the lesson. The conga line method of getting the groups to quickly line up and exit will definitely be a tactic that I am going to use with future physical education classes. The warm up activity of stop and go dancing, transformed my morning grogginess into a more positive energy. The instructions, demonstrations and extension options were clear and easy to understand. As someone who never truly enjoyed physical education class, this lesson got me very engaged and the hour actually flew by!

When thinking about the different assessment strategies that can be used to effectively gather student information, I felt that a mixture of formative and summative would be the best way to accumulate thorough evaluation records. Formative assessment will help build each students’ physical literacy as they use that constructive criticism as a tool to improve their skillset in the current activity. Afterwards, a summative evaluation report will be a great way for students to reflect on how well they improved after using the information from their formative assessment. Since I lack a strong physical education background, I always felt that solely using summative assessment unfair in the sense that it does not give students the opportunity to work on their problem areas before a final summative assessment. I appreciated that Travis came around to my group and pointed out areas to improve that I was unaware of. Instead of becoming discouraged with my performance and the activity itself, I was able to enjoy it a lot more with the formative observations along the way.

Teaching PE was quite fun. It made me a lot less nervous about teaching PE to real elementary students. Teaching PE made me take note of a few of my bad habits that I will work on before teaching. I realized that I have a tendency to hurry as I worry too much about time limits. I now see that clarity (ex. boundaries) is just as important as time to play the game. I also realized how often I use non-gender neutral terms, specifically “you guys.” I am glad that I have time to shift my word use to more inclusive terms. Preparing for the PE lesson was a great learning experience. It was wonderful seeing all the resources and pre-made games that are easily available. As someone that is more drawn to bottom-up teaching for games, I was happy to see there were plenty of resources.

We were fortunate to have such a wonderful group of “students.” I am looking forward to seeing what teaching PE to real elementary students will be like.

This week we read the chapter on assessments and the movement domains. After the reading the two chapters, I have had more understanding how the variety of assessment strategies be used in the P.E. class, such as learning logs and performance task rather than simply-based testing. For example, using the rubric for assessment does help me to self-assess. It does help me to know how I can improve and what I should do differently the next time.

On last Tuesday, the Group Teach did their teaching on striking and batting games. The group started with their instant activity (strike a pose) for five minutes. I found that warm-up activity was good! We can dance or move whatever we like in that area. Even though, I’m not good at dancing. I still have fun in that activity. The group used a rubric for assessment for their activity. I always found it is hard to do self-assess. I don’t know if I should assess myself in a good or outstanding. I always think if you are giving a good or outstanding assessment, then you need to be very good at P.E. or be more physically literate than others. But actually I was wrong! My friend told me that it is not necessary that everyone needs to be fully physically literate. All you have to do is meet all the criteria or standard of the activity then it is all good. I have to say that I really enjoyed the activities on last Tuesday. It was FUN! 😀

Invasion games

I really enjoyed this week’s invasion games. It was very well done. By gradually increasing the technical skill, the students were able to become familiar with each motion. It was interesting to watch the groups interpretation of “Teaching Games for Understanding” I felt that it was very well done.

The dancing was great fun at the beginning, it was a very good warm up activity. If the group had had more time for a warm-up activity I would suggest running through the moves once without music and then once with so we could follow along a bit better.

The stretching at the end was flawless. I found it to be a unique way to cool everyone down, I loved the creativity.  I would love to try that in one of my classes.

Great discussion questions too. I found myself questioning my style of teaching for the rest of the day. I think if I had to choose one: Teaching my students to be life long learners of physical education is the most important. This is best describe through The Fitness for Life Model. Maintaining that life style after school, both through diet and activity is crucial in living a long and happy life.

I would say on the whole, stellar work this week. Thanks Invasion Games Week Group!

Sorry team!  I have been having the toughest time figuring out this whole blogging thing!  But I have it now!

Net/Wall Games

This week was volleyball basics. Starting with the very creative game of tic tac toe with an exercise kick. Followed by an intense warm-up led by Rylan, having us strafe side to side in a crouched position. This warm up is quite versatile as it can work as a warm up for many different sports including, my personal favorite; wrestling. The group teach finished their lesson by breaking us up into different stations teaching us, bumping, setting, serving and then putting it all together by keeping the ball up in a circle. I felt the way the group broke down the basics of volleyball, starting with holding an athletic stance, then teaching each major hit at different stations was a transparent and effective way of teaching. The instruction was clear, concise, and intermittent through each activity. I appreciated how we covered ways a teacher could do this lesson as a single teacher, using group leaders or instruction on a piece of paper at each station.

After reading the chapter on assessment and seeing the way the group on Tuesday used a rubric for assessment of their activity, I have a new appreciation for the difficulty and complexity of effective assessment in P.E. It’s much more difficult than I had expected. It seems that particularly in P.E., assessment is quite a challenge. I originally felt like I would want to assess based more on effort and participation- that is what seemed fairer to me based on my experience. I want to avoid giving good assessment only to those who are more physically fit or physically literate than others. However the chapter outlined some issues with weighing your assessment too heavily on participation and effort. They suggest a balance is required between assessing skills and participation/effort. I can see why this makes sense, but I am still struggling to find the best approach. I also leaned towards the idea of assessing based on improvement. Again, the chapter pointed out that students who were already competent in an area would not be graded well because they didn’t have far to improve. So this isn’t fair either. As the readings and the lecture in class suggested, using a diversity of assessment will be important for accuracy and fairness.

I liked the criteria used in the group’s rubric on Tuesday. It was really helpful to see them create a rubric for a lesson they had planned. It sounds easy to do and a lot more challenging when you sit down to do it. I especially liked how they incorporated “a good attitude” into their rubric. I think it’s so important for kids to know ahead of time what the expectations are and if they see the inclusion of criteria focusing on attitude, teamwork or helping others they will learn that those aspects are equally as important as physical skills.

I feel physical expression can sometimes tell us more about a person than what they say through text or even words. What sparked my interested in this week’s guiding question is how much I realized I used this when I’m evaluating my students for swimming lessons. Just by looking at someone’s body language, you can begin to understand why they struggle sometimes, perhaps they are having an off day. As a teacher, I believe we should place great importance in reading body language of our students. I think the first step in developing this literacy is by simply getting to know your students. I have by no means mastered the ability to read minds or anything. What I’m saying is that its possible for us to develop these skills and help us to be stronger teachers and be more attentive to our students.

The idea of physical expression also relates to our observation and assessment of student learning. By being able to read their physical expression when they are performing a task, we can gage if they need more practise or need a bigger challenge. I think that as we develop a better sense of physical expression, we not only become better at understanding how the students feels but we can also reflect on our physical expression to continue to grow.

Hi, I would like to begin by stating what a wonderful job our teacher candidate peers did today. I had a lot of fun!

Today’s lesson really opened my eyes to what my P.E. teachers have been lacking on throughout my years as a student, not only in elementary, but high school as well and that is assessment strategies. I always went to P.E. thinking if I am the fastest runner or perform greatly in a game or sport I would receive a high mark. However, that was not the case because sometimes I would get a B+ and I would question my teachers why I did not get an A. They would never give me an appropriate answer and I stopped caring because I thought this is not an “academic” course so this won’t reflect poorly on me. Unfortunately, I was not aware of their evaluating scheme. Their assessments never informed me along the way as to how I was performing, so I assumed I was doing well. It has now come to my attention that my teachers used a summative evaluation style. As we discussed in class today, this style of assessing is not nearly as effective as giving students feedback throughout the weeks or even bi-weekly. As a teacher candidate I am very happy to have these great resources to refer to, so I can make sure all students perform to their greatest potential. The assessment and evaluation strategies is my biggest take-away from today’s lesson.

Learning from teachers how to teach learners is quite a meta task.  Today in P.E. class we learned both in active and passive ways.  We got up on our feet to embody the task progression model, and then we also reviewed it on a handout while seated around the projector.  It’s it truly remarkable how much better I understood and will remeber the task progression model from actively doing it, rather than listening and reading about it.

One of this week’s guided questions is, “What is the value of embodied learning?  Why is an active curriculum useful or neccessary?”  Today was an example to me of the effectiveness of embodied learning.  We learn from doing, and often doing requires moving.  I think there’s more to it than that as well.  When sitting all day, I become sleepy, and start to shut down, and don’t feel so good.  Physical activity wakes me up, gets the blood flowing to my brain, and allows me to take in more oxygen.  I am more focused, and have more fun.  It is neccessary that students get to experience the power of activity, and see how it effects every other part of their life.  I can do better in my other classes when I have moved before hand.  Moreover, I think every subject could benefit from incorporating daily physical activity, even if that means using active desks, like treadmill and standing desks.  Here’s an article that outlines some of the scientifically proven benefits of these devices: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3045217/evidence/everything-science-knows-right-now-about-standing-desks