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Dance Presentation

Dance presentation

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Letter to Superintendent

Dear Superintendent,
It has come to my attention that our Physical Education program is becoming stale. The students are becoming quite bored with the same activities every year and would like to become acquainted with something. My proposal to this problem is to add a dance unit in the P.E. curriculum. Not the type of recreational dancing that kids tend to dislike, but more modern dancing that is associated with today's popular music. Being able to dance to enjoyable songs would certainly motivate the students to become physically active. The benefits would include receiving a good cardio work out, being able to socialize with friends, and discovery a life time physical fitness activity.
In addition to including the dance unit, it would be valuable to add a dance studio to the facility. This would be needed to maximize the learning for the activity. The studio would include a smooth wooden floor, which is needed for smooth transitions during dances. It would also need a long mirror so that the teacher may teach the class in the same direction and still be able to keep an eye on everyone. If the mirror were to be missing, then the teacher would have to teach facing the class, making it more difficult for the students. I know this is a huge move for the school, but perhaps we can start small. We could start off with getting a long mirror set up in the gym that could moved or covered. If we see this being a success, then we could move on to planning a bigger expansion.
I hope you take this proposition in consideration and realize how beneficial this addition would be for the student body. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Phil DeHuff

Final Part 1c

1. I am not much of a fan of the Daily Burn. First of all, it is a bit confusing. If you are not fully familiar with the health area, then there is a lot of information on the site that may seem useless to you. The site does not seem to be convenient. You need to type in all of your exercises and repetitions, it is really no different than writing it on a spreadsheet. Being able to keep track of your nutrition on this site is not a bad idea, but it will not always be accurate. You have to search for the foods that you consumed, but the preparation of food is always different if it is not from a chain restaurant. So if you are concentrating on weight loss, the tracking on the site may not be truly accurate unless you are fully aware of the calories you are consuming.

2. To accomplish the recommended Regent's level for LS#1B, students can use Daily Burn to keep track of the particular areas of health. Whether it should be nutrition or work-outs, students can log in and organize what they have done throughout the school year. I do not think students would be too thrilled having to log onto the website and track everything that they have done. If everyone had advanced enough phones, there is sure to be an application that does the same tracking as the site. It would just be more convenient and possibly more simple. Step counts and heart rate monitors would be just as useful and would not require anymore tracking that writing down the appearing numbers.

3. Taking screenshots, like the ones seen in this blog, can certainly capture the results from the program. It would give a clear view to the teacher and could be shared without outside people taking a look at them. The privacy can be contained through Google docs in which the student can share a document with the teacher, containing screenshots of the required results.

Final Part 1a&b

The video "Brain Gains" is found on the website CBC.ca, which is developed Canada. The story itself takes place at a school called City Park Collegiate in Saskatoon.
The news piece is quite interesting as it is about how teachers set up an exercise program for the students in order to achieve higher grades. The school is for more troublesome students for are not as capable as other students there own age, in addition to having behavioral problems. The program created at the school was aimed to help these students grow more brain cells and fixate behavioral problems.
The PE teacher at the school is not talked about, but PE programs in general are discussed. It is stated how the majority of students in PE classes do not participate and would rather just "chill" in class. The people who actually participate are athletes, but they are already active from their sports and do not need the class for health benefits. As a teacher, it will be important to find activities that everyone would be able to participate and benefit from. This program in particular seems to be a great idea locating at the outcomes from City Park Collegiate.
The main outcomes from the program were that the students' grades improved a whole letter grade and their behavior improved as well. Even though I have heard that students who participate in exercise are more successful in school, I was bit surprised by the results. These students were not motivated whatsoever and their behavior was distracting to everyone. These type of students generally become drop-outs and have trouble in life. I was proved wrong after seeing the success of this program became for them all. It is not just any physical activity that is supposed to give these benefits. The NYS PE standards do not get the same outcomes as this program has a specific set up. The exercise is sustained aerobic movement. The heart rate must be at 65% to 75% of the student's maximum heart rate and be held for 20 minutes. This exercise helps grow brain cells, which results in improved learning.
BDNF stands for brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is a protein that helps growth and differentiation of neurons. The "key" booked the exercise program was based on was Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey. He explains in the video that the students who benefit from the program become more attentive, less impulsive, and less fidgety, thus benefiting from the BDNF's.

Conclusion in Leadership hours

In addition to the hours I put in at my church, I just concluded my intramural soccer season as acting captain. The reason I say acting captain is because I am not the person who signed and put the team together. However, with my previous soccer experience. I took hold the team and lead it to numerous victories.
The season started at a slow point since we lost our first 3 games. At this point, it was obvious that we needed to make changes as a team. I began me role as acting captain by explaining what we needed to do in order to come on top, such as marking opponents and calling out open passes. Little by little, our team worked these improvements and started winning games. Our record for the regular season ended up being 3-3.
Playoffs were now here and everyone on the team was now confident that we could make it to the top. In preparation, I started having practices so that we could strategize and touch up on our skills. The practice paid off as we won our first game in the playoff bracket. Unfortunately we did not make it passed the next team. However, this only prevented us from winning the all school league. We were now put in the rec league playoff bracket for another chance of victory. We ended up winning the first game in the bracket, thus leading us into the championship game. In the end, we ended up with a 0-2 heartbreaking loss. I explained to everyone to keep their heads up as we played a great game against a good team. Not to mention the game was on a turf field, which was a new environment for everyone. I also told them how we improved immensely as a team since we started the season off with losses. Next year holds more opportunities for us and I look forward to leading my team again. This season gives me a substantial amount of leadership hours needed for the course.

End of the Semester

A video recapping the semester:

Lab D: Time to Dance!

Lab D was the last of my lessons for EDU 255 and I feel that I have made a great improvement as a teacher since day 1 of the class. My lesson focus was on dancing. I chose to teach the dance to the chorus of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. I felt this would be fun to teach as she is currently one of today's biggest pop stars, which would intrigue people in the classroom. Connecting to students' interest certainly do increase the energy level in the classroom and I believe I succeeded in doing so. Take a look at my Lesson Plan for further information on the lesson.
Going into the lesson, I knew that I needed to give feedback to the majority of the students. I was able to give almost everyone in the class feedback, which is definitely something I struggled with in earlier lessons. Also, I made sure I gave the majority of the people congruent feedback, since that is the way for students to gain success. An exact layout of who I gave feedback to can be see in my Feedback Analysis. There were two problems with this. First, I have trouble keeping my eyes on the entire class while I am helping students out. I find it hard to focus on giving someone improvements to the given task and look out for troublemakers at the same time. This is a skill that I definitely need to acquire. Another problem with me giving feedback is that it takes a long time for me to get to everyone. This leaves the people who can do the task to become bored and begin to stop. Challenges would have solved this problems and unfortunately I forgot to use them. You can see the lack of challenges in my content development.
There was a big time issue with my lesson. I was going according to plan, but the lesson before me started late and ended late. Once the official class time was coming to an end, I was told that I only had a minute. I started to panic and pretty much skip to the end just so I could get to the finale of the lesson. Luckily my professor allowed me to have extra time to complete my lesson and all of my classmates were willing to stay as well. Regardless, I still had good time management, unlike almost all of my previous lessons. In addition to that, my Time Coding has improved immensely. I had over 60% of activity time. This is very important for a physical education class as you want your students to be moving consistently.
As much as I have improvement since the beginning of the semester, there will always be more need of improvement. I tend to slip up my wording often when I am giving instructions to the class. I believe this will decrease when I become more proficient in the subject areas. Knowing what and how I will be teaching the class is always the challenge, but I know I will overcome this challenge before going into my student teaching.

Leadership hours.....the beginning

During my Spring Break, I was able to volunteer at my church to acquire leadership hours. This included the Friday night youth program called Awana and two sessions of Sunday school. The total hours I received added up to be 5 hours.

March 12th was the day I helped at Awana. Normally the kids are split up according to grade level, but this was a special day with some presenters. The beginning and end comprised of me keeping control of a group of kids in the pews. At one point the children engaged in a few games, one of which was rock, paper, scissors tag. I participated along and helped those who were having trouble figuring out what they were supposed to do. The evening lasted around 3 hours.

On March 14th and 21st, I assisted in leading the 1st-4th grade class. The class consisted of stories, lessons, craft activities, and a video. All in
which I helped with. Taking these opportunities have definitely helped improved my role as a leader. Leading and maintaining the children is something that I will have to do as a physical educator. Each class lasted for an hour, bringing my total hours so far to 5.

Lab C: Curling!

For lab C, I taught curling to the class. This wasn't a TRUE curling lesson as we do not of proper equipment, but adjustments were made in order to learn the technique of curling (for example, using using Arizona Ice Tea jugs as stones). The equipment was put into good use.
Looking at my teaching, I think my strongest point is my introduction. I am able to grab everyone's attention with my hooks and enthusiasm. I have a lot of fun doing it, which is probably why it is effective.
As usual, I made good use of my voice, making sure everyone would be able to hear me. I also feel that my directions were overall distinguishable, even though there were a couple times of confusion due to me forgetting something.
Even though my instructions were good, the Time Coding shows that my instructions took up more than half of the class. This is not good for getting students to be physically active, but curling is more of a technical sport.
Looking at my Feedback Analysis, I only gave a few people feedback, and only half of those were specific. This is an area I still need to work on. I get caught up making sure that everyone is doing the task, I forget to explain to people what they are doing right or wrong. It usually takes someone to do something completely wrong for me to correct them. Hopefully I will be able to give more feedback during my next lesson.
Other aspects of the C-9 form I forgot to do were intratask variation and challenges. I had prepared myself before the lesson to use them but they slipped from my mind. This is most likely due to my poor judgment of time. I had a watch on but I did not use it to my advantage. Having a stop watch may be more beneficial for time management. Even though time was not too big of an issue, next lesson I hope to not forget any important aspects.
My video, lesson plan, and task progressions can be viewed below:

Lesson Plan
Task Progressions

Lab B2: Time To Disco

For my jump rope lesson, I decided to teach the Double Dutch - Disco (Inside Wrap), which was one of my given tasks. I knew that I would have to break down the main objective into progressions in order for anyone to be able to perform it. Unfortunately, the segments took longer than planned and we never got to include the jump ropes. After reviewing my video though, the lesson was only 6 minutes when it had to be 7. This was not my mistake, but I would have been able to get some jump roping in if I had that last minute. The disruption of time affected my Time Coding as my desired amount of activity did not take place. Not to mention the misbehaved students, who ended up taking 40 seconds of my lesson in order for them to be brought back to the lesson.
Looking at my Transcript and Feedback Analysis, I believe that I did a fairly good job helping out all of the students. When people were having trouble, I approached them and helped them through the steps to perform the technique properly. I did not give any positive specific feedback. I guess I was more concerned with helping those having trouble.
Besides the technicalities I experienced, I believe I handled the lesson very well. My voice continues to be a strong point in my lessons as it grabs the attention of everyone. I did, however, forget to recite the cues after my first demonstration. This is actually embarrassing as I had them right behind me on the poster. I did use cues when going on to the next expanded task, except they weren't the same words I had wrote down. They were still correct and were useful. I had challenges ready for the jump rope tasks but we did not make it to those. In my future lessons, I should anticipate the length of giving feedback and plan accordingly. For example, I could have started the inside wrap with the jumping cues, but I didn't realize how long the feedback would take. This is just something I will have to adjust to after more experience.
My lesson can be heard here and viewed below.

Lab B1: Jump x 2

This was a brief jump rope lesson regarding the double (basic jump). I believe that I did a fairly good job with this lesson. It was a very basic skill, so there was not much I could do with trying to explain what to do. With such a simple task, it would have been good to offer challenges for the skill, but my main objective was to give good feedback to the students.
Looking at my feedback analysis and transcript, I was able to give more specific feedback this time around, but it was not varied. It would be best if I had a list in advance of what I want to see from the students. This would help checking off what someone is doing right or wrong. For the next B lab, I will prepare myself with specifics for giving feedback, as well as more expanded lesson. This is especially important because the next task will be a lot more difficult. The audio of this lesson can be heard here!

Lab A2.5: Here We Go Again.....Again

So after the unfortunate event of my original video being corrupted *coughYangcough*, I took the opportunity to do my lesson again. This time it was with the entire class and no materials, but I think I handled the situation well. I knew I had made a few mistakes with my original lab, so now was the time to fix them. Overall the lesson went well.
I made sure I taught the cues to the lay-up, which are "left, right, jump". I used these cues numerous times in the lesson to make sure everyone remembered what to do. My voice was definitely loud enough for the class for all instructions and kept the flow of the lesson consistent.
In terms of giving feedback, I still struggled to give specific feedback. It was mainly general feedback being given out, such as "good job". I find it difficult to evaluate everyone during a rather fast pace drill. For future lessons, it would be good for me to give an individual useful feedback without worrying about watching the next person in a drill. If I worry about watching every individual, then I will not be able to give constructive feedback.
Being concerned with the people performing the lay-ups also distracted me from paying attention to the people in the lines. To avoid waiting time, I had one line practice their form. First of all, I should have told both lines to do something. I would of had the lay-up line practice dribbling but alas we had no basketballs balls. Second, the rebound line stopped practicing their form after a while and I did not even notice. I should be paying attention to all aspects of the activity. Since there was a substantial amount of students, I should have made two separate groups so that everyone had more opportunities to try out the skill.
Regardless of my flaws, this was a good experience for me. I am feeling more confident when teaching in front of everyone. I know that I will improve from my flaws after more teaching experiences.




Time Coding
Transcript
Feedback Analysis

Lab A2 : Here We Go Again

Lab A2 was meant to be a revamped lesson of our first lesson (a disastrous one in my opinion). This time I was able to prepare myself with the lesson, having a plan that would fit within the 4 minute span. There certainly was no doubt on how I used my voice. It was loud and clear the entire time, which grabbed the attention of all of the students. For the actual lesson, I had the students do progressions so that they can ease in to the actual lay up skill. I did not drag any of them on for long since I overlooked the amount of time I had during the last lab. Another problem I had last time was the amount of waiting time. All of the drills I had required the majority of the class to wait. To fix this problem during the lay up drill, I had the students either dribble a basketball or practice there lay up form while waiting on line. This kept everyone active during the entire drill.
Even though I made improvements in some areas, I still had some faults in the lesson. One would be that I forgot to state the skills. I was planning to tell the students right before the actual lay up drill. The cues I was going to say were "jump left foot, shoot right hand". Short and simple. This would have certainly been useful but unfortunately I failed to mention them. Another fault of mine was the amount of feedback given to the participants. I had trouble trying to compile feedback for students as the lay up drill moved quickly. Some students received feedback, but it was mainly general feedback. The last fault I had was the conclusion. I will admit that I was unprepared for it and I'm positive that it was clear to everyone else. Next time I will have something in advance.

Time Coding For Lab A1

After establishing my time coding form, it looks like I need to make MAJOR changes to my lessons. Since this lesson was done at the spur of the moment, I knew that it would not be that good. The major problem with the lesson is the lack of activity. The drills that I had everyone do required waiting time since less than 50% of the class were being active at once. For future lessons, I now know to come up with drills and activities that get the majority of the class moving at once.
I did end up with the correct amount of time for management, but the instructions took up the majority of the lesson. The most instruction took place while trying to explain the drills. I need to be able to explain the directions more clearly or have simpler drills for shorter lessons.

Time Coding Form

Blog and Lesson Introductions

After reviewing my introduction videos, I believe that I did a fairly good job vocally. I produced a clear voice and it was loud enough to understand. I had also made good use of hand movements for instructional purposes. They were kept in constant motion to help enhance the lesson.
Even though I overall avoid filler words like "uhmm", I tend to have slight pauses and occasionally redundant sentences. It should be useful for me to know exactly how I want to execute my speech for the lesson. Cues would are something I should have added in this lesson like "left, straight" and "right, side, strike". Clapping is not really a good signal of attention as I should just yell "go" and "stop".

Lab A1: On The Spot Lesson

1. After reviewing my video, I believe that the hand gestures that I incorporated helped my teaching as it kept the attention of the students. I was able to get everyone's attention in the beginning with my voice, but it could have definitely been louder.

2. The one thing I need to improve on is timing and instruction. This lesson had to come from the spur of the moment, so it would have been more organized if prepared in advance. Another thing that should be improved is the presentation of the skill by overemphasizing the motions and techniques.

3. Being more organized is very important for any type a lesson. You need to be on top everything so that the lesson can go in a constant flow. This way you have the student's attention consistently and they don't drift off into doing something else. Overemphasizing the skills would also be beneficial to students as it will show them what to exactly do. If you position yourself clearly, then students will have a hard time trying to follow your technique.