Looking Back on the Semester

This class, EDU 255, has taught me many new things and gave me resources and tips that I can carry on with throughout the rest of my education and into my teaching. In the class I learned a lot by watching my peers teach; picked up on some things that worked really well and saw things not to do while teaching. This class also introduced to new technology for example this blog and google docs. When I first started to do this blog, all I knew how to do was to post a blog. Now I can insert a picture and link to a website. This blog was fun to do, after I got teaching for the day, I would tell people that I could not wait till I went and blogged about how it went. Overall this semester has been a buys with classes, lacrosse and rehabbing my knee and trying to posts blog. I should have posted more blogs, but this whole idea of opening yourself up to the Internet was hard for me to accept. I think I might continue to use this blog as I go on in my education, about my observing hours for 256 as well as maybe updates on my lacrosse season. One more test to go and I am on break!!!!

Happy Holidays!!!!

Professional Protfolio

As I get closer and closer to student teaching; I have to start putting together my professional portfolio. These are the artifacts that I have so far chose to put in:

Standard 4: Fitness Plan

Standard 5: Unit Presentation for Stats

Standard 5: Data Analysis

Heart Rate

I enjoyed the scavenger hunt a lot. I like to run around and find things, it was fun. I felt that this was a good activity, all the students were moving around. I can see myself doing this activity with a class I trusted and it would have to be a older class. I do not think I would trust 6th graders to run around the school grounds looking for clues. I think inter disciplinary teaching is effective because students learn in all different ways and the more exposure that they have to a concept the more they learn. This activity kept me very active, I was above my target heart rate zone for a little bit. I was exhausted by the time the lesson was over.

Lab D: Ice Skating

Today, I taught lab D, which was ice skating out in the ice rink. I taught forward skating, one of the basic forms of skating. I think today went okay. I have decided that I am going to have to use note cards while I am teaching because I always forget to do something or mention something that is in my lesson plan. It was different teaching ice skating because the class took place in a different environment. It also opened my eyes up to the different levels in classes. Some students were pros at skating while others were very hesitant and nervous on the ice. I continue do learn more things about teaching as I teach more and more. I just have to keep practicing and learn from my previous teaching experiences. After listening to myself teach and completing my transcript of the lesson, I found that I mix my words up a lot. I say sentences that do not make sense, or use the wrong word. I think I need to really think about what I am going to say before I say. For just about every sentence I said, I started it with so. I need to improve on not saying so, and just being more clear about everything. My feedback for this lesson was not that great. I gave out a lot more general feedback then anything. I also paid more attention to the students that had a harder time doing the skill. I think one of the reasons why I did not give much feedback is because I was not very familiar with ice-skating and did not know really what to say to the students. My time management during this lesson was not that bad. I think I should have had more activity for the students to do. I need to talk less too. Half my lesson goes to giving out instructions to the students.

Hurling Day 2

Today was the second time that I taught a mini lesson on hurling. I think that this time around went a lot better then the first time. I felt better prepared and had more of an idea of what I was doing. There are still some aspects of teaching that I need to work on. Each little lesson I teach I learn more things about teaching that I had never thought to do before or needed to be done. I feel like I am a little stressed out teaching, just making sure that I am including everything that I need to include, but at the same time I am enjoying myself. Next time around I hope to improve a little more. From my transcript, this time around I said like a lot, which is not a good thing and there were still some parts that I could not fully understand what I was saying. My time management was all right. I was close to having 50% of activity time. The feedback that I gave back to my students was I think could have been better. I gave feedback to about half the class, but gave more feedback to girls than the guys.

Hurling Day 1

Today I taught hurling (the national sport of Ireland) and it should could have gone better. I did some aspects of teaching well but lacked in other areas. I think I was nervous because I know I left somethings out that I wanted to say and sometimes rushed things. I know I left out some important aspects like introducing myself and checking for understand. Checking for understanding is a big aspect that I should have not missed. From this experience I hope that I learn from my mistakes. I think I should have been more prepared than what I was. Next time I teach I will know to prepare myslef better and make sure I hit all or as many componets of teaching that I can.

Feedback Analysis

After analyzing the feedback I gave for my lesson on catching a Frisbee I learned a lot. At first when I was giving feedback I was not using the student's name, I would just say good job. Most of my feedback had to do with the skill and the cues that I gave. I did not have any behavior or congruent feedback, but I did have some general. I realized that sometimes I should add more to my feedback then just a good job. I should be more specific and really look at what the student is doing. I only gave feedback to eight students and of those eight four were males and four were females. I also did two people feedback twice. Giving feedback is a lot harder than I thought it would be.