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.