Another day of Affirmation! Where do you stand amongst it all?

To my fellow rockstars,

Today's inspiration comes from learning. That is learning from life. Take another moment and reflect what this story means to you personally and professionally. We all have different opinions about how portray life and portray our profession. Let's share it with one another not just through the blog but through ourselves

A life of learning

Your 1st Affirmation and quite frankly not your last

     First off i want to send a shout out to Shirley Cahill for giving me this idea. She was the one that brought me into the concept of the DailyOM. This website is desinged to nature the mind and spirit by supplying us with stories that touch our hearts and open our mind to ideas that we should carry throughout of lives. For you future educators out there take a moment each day and reflect on these stories. How do they relate to your everyday lives? How do they relate to your profession? What bits and pieces of these stories remind you of your day in general? Most importantly how can you use this as a future educator to motivate your students? Take a moment and read through the story provided in the link below, you never know what may change your life! Rock on rockstars!


Sending Love Ahead to Your Day

Motor Skills of the 2nd chapter. The training wheels for this lifestyle we call Physical Education

3) Learning new skills require the mastery of easier skills. These prerequisites are the foundation of the fundamental motor skills. Students need to know the task at hand so they can adapt their bodies to different situations to accomplish these tasks. If the task isn't clear the students wont be able to learn new abilities and advance to more advanced skills. It's important as an instructor to provide proper feedback to the students as they perform different skills. Pinpointing is a great way to allow students to demonstrate their skills and it will allow them to stay motivated to progress in motor movment. Without practice the students won't improve. In simplistic terms pratice makes perfect.

4) Different skills can be classified in 2 categories:  open and closed. Closed skills are under spatial control meaning that they occur in a stable and predictable enviornment. Discrete skills have a specific ending and they are more effective in a closed enviornment. Discrete skills can be performed in a series. These are called serial skills. Open skills like those performed in a game like setting are done in a variable and unpredictable enviornment. Skills performed here are more continous meaning they are linked together with other parts or skills.

Communication and Demonstration. . . Communistration for physical education. A chapter 4 review

2)  Getting the attention of students in a class room how is that different from a gymnasium? There is no difference silly your a physical educator, the gymnasium is your class room. Maintaining the attention of your students is the most important criteria for instruction. In a gym setting your students are going to wander and wander quickly. It's our job as an educator to provide protocols in the class room. You are the instructor, you are the inspiration for the next generation, so provide some rules that are clear and positive so that students know what's expected of them. We want to keep this brief however because we can't hold them back from having fun.

3) What better way to educate than to demonstrate? It's a great way for students to observe how to execute skill concepts properly. But why should you demonstrate alone right? Let's get the students involved right? Pinpointing is a perfect way not only to get students involved but to keep them motivated. Pull a boy and girl aside who's doing the skill correctly, let their talent shine through the whole class. Then again what about little Jimmy your student who's struggling with a volleyball bump? Bring him up in front, let him show his stuff because you know he deserves your support to. You get Jimmy motivated, you give the Jimmy the ability to succeed and that's our goal as educators. We want our students to excel.

5) When performing a movement it needs to follow a sequence that your students can follow to understand. Closed skills such as free-throws and serving in Tennis are better taught using verbal cues. Students will process this information as they perform the skill continually. The more they practice the better they will get be sure to remind them of the cues needed to perform the skill. Open skills occur in a constantly changing enviornment so demonstrating a skill would benefit them more. Providing feedback to the students is a great way for them to fix mistakes and to continually process the correct movement

I screammmmm for ICE CREAMMMMM

One of the main things i've learned about teaching a lesson is that you NEED to keep your students MOTIVATED and focused on you. You are the physical educator, you are the standard to what great teachers should be and it has to show through your performance.

As the top photo shows Greg and Tyler were into my lesson and you can see that in their faces as well as their body language. The 2nd photo down shows from left to right Rob and Matt and how thye reacted while i was explaining my lesson. As you can tell the smiles say it all and that's what we need to focus on. Not only the fine motor skills but the affective domain. Are your students having fun? Are they engaged in your activity? Are they focused on you and nothing else? Does your presense keep the kids physically active? These are the questions we need to ask ourselves.

Lets get back to the basics shall we. As you can from this photo i brought the students to a corner or a wall where there are NO DISTRACTIONS. How important is this concept? If you want your voice to project to your students and if you want them to focus on you and only you than this concept is for you. That's one of the first things i've learned during my time here at SUNY Cortland, you need to stand out.

Let's be honest your not going to have a perfect lesson. Teachers make mistakes and while i was standing up there i knew i made some but i went with it anyway. As future educators we need to understand that our focus are the kids. We need to do everything in our power to press on with a lesson no matter how many mistakes or pauses we endure. The beginning of my lesson i thought went pretty well. I brought students to a corner so they would keep their focus on me and not get distracted. Before i even said a word, i had them do diffferent things to be motivated such as stomping your feet and clapping your hands. My focus was to keep attention and not to let go. My hook was ice cream. Realistic i don't know any student who doesn't love ice cream so why not right? I go from motivation, to ice cream, to learning how to throw ice cream. I'll admit i don't think that was the best approach especially if the students end up going home and have ice cream for dessert. They get to tell their parents that they learned how to throw ice cream during physical education. What ind of program am i running and who's gonna clean that ice cream off the wall later? Demonstrating the "T" for overhand throws was the best way i saw for the kids to learn. Last semester i observed my classmates at St. Mary's working on the "T" at St. Mary's and saw how easily the students picked it up. I guess you can say i stole it but i think it was just a brilliant idea. I gave the students an option indirectly. If you can throw from a "T" then you get more ice cream because my activity involved getting ice cream into the truck so we can make more. I wouldn't say perfect by any means but everyone was involved. I saw a lot of smiles to and what more could i have asked for? Overall i think my performance speaks for itself. Literally because i could actually hear myself this time. I would change some things like introducing myself before we start the activity so that the class knows my name! I think that was a critical point i misjudged. Also i didn't give the students feedback about throwing because i was to involved with being the ice cream truck and if i were to assess my students i wouldn't be able to give them pointers on what they are doing wrong or right. Also time i didn't use it productively. I spent more time instructing than i did with my activity and that is a no no. You want to keep kids active and involved and not lecture them for the entire period. The only good part about my time management was not having the students wait long at all. I was up there, motivated, and got their attention right away. As a future educator my focus will be mainly on the affective because without it there is no way your students will engage in motor movement or even think about it. We all play a role in the fate of the future lets decide how we want to be remembered. I want my students to be motivated everytime i walk through those gym doors.

Goals for the physical educator. . . well chapter 1 questions

1) Teaching a goal-oriented physical education program is realistically up to the educators themselves. Every physical education program needs to focus on goals based on the three domains (psychmotor, cognitive, and affective). Students need to develop skills that will promote life-long physical fitness. Skill assessment is only a third of the battle. Students also need to develop the habits of absorbing the movement and thinking about it while they do it. Educators need to give them a challenging program that helps students learn to use mind and body to accomplish given tasks. Most importantly students need to have fun while they learn. To put it easily the more fun they have, the more they'll remember what's happened in pe. My teachers did a wonderful job in high school, i'm glad i learned tennis and soccer skills in college.

2)The movement task-student response unit is key in physical education because we need to know how were doing as far as teaching certain skills. Every student learns differently and it's our job as educators to modify our curriculums to meet the standards for each individual student. No one should fall behind which is another reason why most physical education curriculums fail.

3)Teaching functions are guidelines for teaching skills. All educators have different abilities and beliefs about how to execute certain skills. Two teaching functions involve planning and presenting tasks. One way to plan and present a task is teaching by invitation. The educator allows students to work with equipment and perform tasks they feel most comfortable with. Another way to plan and present is Intra-Task variation. This is where the educator determines the skill level of the students based on prior assessments