Scavenger Hunt!

The last day of class for the semester was a bit of a treat. We got out of the classroom and got to do a scavenger hunt. This was no ordinary hunt though, it was one from the future with its use of technology. Paper, pens and little items were not in play, but what was being used is the thing that all teachers hate, phones. With the use of smart phones, a senior here at Cortland named Ben Paquette developed an "app" for us to use. The app was downloadable and how it worked was scanning, or taking a picture of a barcode linked with a number would give a clue. The clue was a riddle for us to figure out where in Park Center (the main athletic building on campus) to go to achieve the next clue. Along with the clue came a letter and after finding all the clue, we had to race back to the classroom and desipher the code. On the journey to find each clue, there were some "altercations" with other teams. Friendly none the less, but it got pretty intense when two teams came barring down on one clue. The answer to the riddle was "London 2012." Ben chose this because that is where and when the next Olympics is being held. I thought it was rather clever, and enjoyed participating in the activity. This was a great idea and I expected nothing less when I saw that Ben had put it together. Amazing way to end the semester.

The Technology!

The Happy Faces!

Lab D

For Lab D I took the activity of Sport Stacking. I've had some background with this game in the past because when it first came out, my friends and I baught our own sets and practiced all the time.

 I started off the class by having them re-cap on what they learned from the previuos session. I demonstrated and used some visual aides to help the students visualize and have a better understanding of what it was that they were "creating." After re-capping, we jumped right into the 6-6 stack and how to break it down. A few of the students were struggling so I walked around giving some tips and adjusting some techniques but the majority of them took charge and did it beautifully. The 1-10-1 stack came next. I did a quick demonstration of how to execute it and brake it down properly.

             The students really wanted to get to use the time mats so after I demonstrated the last part of the cycle, I let them have some fun on their own.  Nobody came close to beating the world record of 5.93 seconds, but they enjoyed trying. A big curve-ball that was thown my way was having one of the students suddenly become blind. I had to think quick to get this one under control so i came up with a good idea. They were working in partners so since one of them was blind, I declared the other one to have magically lost his hands. So now they had to work together as one to still complete the task at hand. The student with no hands had to conduct the student with no eyes where to move his hands to stack the cups in order.

This was pretty remarkable because they completed the task in a very good time. I enjoyed it so much that I had the entire class come over to watch so that they could all realize that it is not easy having a handicap to accomplish things, but it is not impossible.

Lab C

For Lab C I was paired with my fellow classmate, Sarah to combine teach a segment. The segment consisted of a foreign sport. Our sport was designated to the East-Asian game of Sepak Takraw. Sepak Takraw in simply traslated into, "kick the ball," and thats exactly what the players do. We were required to incorporate some usage of technology during our lesson to give the students a visual aid on what they were learning. I decided to make a power-point presentation with genereal information, rules and even a full video of the game being played. The students were really facinated by the video because the players were of the Thailand national team and could perform some impressive moves to spike and block the ball.

Before I even got into the lesson I had the class do an instant activity. I put on a song and had them all line up together and perform as a "kick-line."They were all smiling and having fun with it. I picked this instant activity because it was entertaining but more importantly, it was to stretch out their legs for a bit seeing as Sepak Takraw is alot of leg movements. I feel I performed pretty well for this Lab because I was confident and I once again felt comfortable. I used my signal for attention which was my whistle and moved around the gym alot giving feedback to groups and individual students.

One thing that I absolutely need to work on is recognizing where I am within the gymnasium. I tend to have my back to students when I am instructing others. Proffessor Yang caught me sleeping and told two of the students to go hide behind the bleechers. These two students were actually acting up at the begining of the lesson when they were kicking the ball over the net when I had instructed everyone to just pass the ball back and forth. I should have known that they were going to be trouble but i let it slip by. They hid until I had concluded my lesson and then it was brought to my knowledge. I will work on this.

The Hiding Students

Transcript



Lab B

Teaching today did not feel weird at all. I felt like I have been doing it for twenty years because it was just so natural and fluent. In Lab A2 I was still studdering my words and pausing to think about what I wanted to say but for Lab B everything I said came out smooth. I think I was finally comfortable being in front of my peers and instructing them on performing a task. Even though the cross-over was a pretty difficult skill, the majority of the class conquered it. That made me feel even better because I feel that I was a factor in them learning the skill. All-in-all I'de say Lab B was a success.

I'm the Jump-Rope specialist!

BIG

HUG

"Snorkle Monster on 3... 1-2-3 SNORKLE MONSTER!"

Reflection on Lab A2

This second time around, unfortunately, I don't feel that I improved much. I still used "um" and paused even more in between words and sentences. Although I did know that I was being timed, I still did not get to finish my intended plan. There were a few points that I knew what i wanted to say but the words came out slow because I was trying to words them to sound better. I did not like that I was over analyzing things. To credit myself now, I feel that I spoke louder and somewhat clearer. I interacted with the students a bit more by giving them the chance to have a competition and see if they could use me as their target to roll and throw the ball at to work on the skill they had just learned.

First Day Teaching of EDU 255 Lab A1

For Lab A1 I was nervous because I did not have anything prepared and was a bit surprised that we were actually teaching on the first day. We were given equipment to teach whatever we thought was appropriate so I decided to teach the proper technique to throw, roll, and punt the soccer ball back into play as the goal keeper. I chose this because I had previously taught a session about these techniques at my prior university and had retained the knowledge of the lesson plan. The only downfall I had with making that choice was that the first time I taught these skills, I was given up to 45 minutes to teach. This time around I was only allowed 4 minutes total. Then on top of that, i came in a minute late so I did not hear the initial instructions of what we were to be doing that day, so I did not even hear that we were only allowed to have 4 minutes to teach our seminar. Critiquing my performance I would say that I definitely need to work on my pauses and saying "um." Also, working on communicating with the students while they are performing the task would be beneficial.