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.