Working with the basketball team

For my ten hours of community service I spent a week working with the girls varsity basketball team. This was a very valuable experience, not only did I get to learn great coaching tips from an excellent coach, but I was able to see what worked and what didn't with the players. In 255 you learn that you have to have control and everyone needs to hear you, in the gym with the boys playing on the other side being loud was very important. I also learned in 255 to make sure that my cues were clear, for example when I incorrectly told the class to dribble with their finger tips, instead of finger pads. When I was working with the post players know what I wanted, and giving them exact directions helped move the process along quicker. The players all responded well to my directions and by the end of the week they were performing the moves with correct form.

255 is almost over...

I finished my Lab D project today... here it is.

Taylor Mali

I just wanted to expose everyone who may look at this blog to a great poet... actually the only poet I truly enjoy hearing Taylor Mali

In class assignment

Me Teaching Self Defense

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Lab D - Self Defense 11-14-08

I should have added NO FIGHTING!

Lab D Self Defense
For me lab D was on Friday, I had decided to stay with the topic of self defense I taught for my lab C activity. I was nervous for Friday... I was not sure if my lesson plan was right, I wasn't entirely sure how the students would react to the activity, I felt like it wasn't really enough of a lesson, and I was worried about how it would effect my grade. Once my lesson started I began to relax, I adapted freeze tag to fit with the grabs we did during the last class that the students would need to use to break free from their attackers during the lesson. I think everyone enjoyed the tag game, I had Russ and a few others be the taggers, Russ had really high energy and I think was one of the reasons the game was successful. After the first round everyone wanted to play again so I had Russ be the tagger by himself, it worked great! Russ tagged everyone and then we moved on the the next activity... or most of the class moved on at least. Two students began "making out" in the corner. I went over and separated them and then finally got everyone on task with the "bad neighborhood activity" when all of a sudden Chris and Mike started fighting... o boy. After I finally got them to quit Eddie joined in and the fight restarted! :( It was very frustrating, here I am trying to explain a concept and a fight breaks out. I did my best to break up the fight and get the class back on topic but the class didn't remember what they were supposed to be doing. I had to explain the activity again and try to get the class motivated for the activity even though I could tell by the look in the student's faces that my activity was not as interesting as the boys fighting was. The class kept looking back to the guys to see if another fight was about to break out. The class did the activity for a little while, then I gave them a quiz. As the students were taking a quiz I though O NO!!!! I realized that my camera was still in my pocket! My technology for lab D was taking pictures and having the students post them to their websites... not taking any pictures would equal no technology. So I improvised. I had the students come back out onto the floor and go through a few more moves and then the cool down routine. Doing this ended up killing my time coding sheet. The end part where they were doing a few more moves and then the cool down breathing exercises counted as instruction, rather than activity which made the lesson contain too much instruction time and not enough activity time. Another thing that upset the time coding was the fight, it took a minute and 45 seconds, which was counted as management time causing an unbalance in the time coding.

Explorer Scavenger Hunt Assignment

Step count: 1048

Explorer Scavenger Hunt!

Our first clue was my favorite, it was "she's not a nickel, dime, or quarter, go find the clue and take a picture" Nickle, dime, quarter... Penny! So we went and had our picture taken with her.

We were all excited that we knew the answer to the question and raced down the stairs to find Penny. I think the thing I will take away from this lesson was the ability to change track quickly. The fire alarm went off and we were all outside DJ and Freddy kept the hunt going... way to think on your feet guys!

I can't really see myself doing this type of lesson because I think I the environment we were in students would just quit and not do the tasks. We did something like this when I was in ninth grade and the whole class left school and went to the park. Interdisciplinary instruction is important because it reinforces the material over and over again and the students end up taking more away from the experiences.

We were pretty active throughout the lesson but I think that a couple of us had not locked our heart rate monitors to us. We were all waiting outside and took our heart rates... we were around the 90 mark but our watches were much higher. For the most part I think having the step count and heart rate monitor were a great tool to assess our activity.

Lab C day one

For the Lab C teaching experience we had to pick a game or activity that did not originate in America, it was to be a game/activity that is not something we do every day like basketball, football, or soccer. My partner and I decided to teach self defense. I have never taken a self defense class but I figured we could do a good job. My partner, Eddie, was a teachers assistant for self defense and is very skilled and knowledgeable in the topic. Having someone who knew the activity so well as my partner really helped out. Eddie would teach me how to do the motions, and why it was important to do so in that way and then I taught the class. Most of the students in class had already taken the self defense class and already knew how to perform the steps. The first thing I did was to teach them the respect stance. The respect stance is very important to self defense because you must show respect for your self and others before you begin. In the respect stance you stand very proud with your shoulders back, feet are positioned like this \/ with heals touching and your feet out at 45 degree angles. After teaching the class the position we played respect tag! respect tag would be a great activity to use in the next class as an instant activity. After respect tag I taught the confidence stance, then into proceeding with confidence. Next we put all the stances together in the stance sequence and then it was Eddies turn. I felt nervous before I started teaching because I have never taken self defense before, and did not really know very much about it. However as soon as I started teaching the apprehension was gone and I had a great time showing everyone how to do the moves and walking through everyone making sure that they were in the correct stance. I got to help a few more people with the confidence stance, some people did not have their knees bent, others forgot to keep their backs straight.
All and all I felt confident in my abilities to teach the class a skill that I might not excel at but that it seemed a few of the students really enjoyed. My grade was a 15.5 out of 20 so I have some things to review and improve on before I teach again. Here is a copy of my time coding form