PHED 3671: Reflection 1 – Pre-Teaching
During my time this semester as a beginning teacher when I think of my weaknesses, I think about my classroom management. During this semester I really struggled with this. When I had classes with about 24 to 30 students was a lot to management for me. At that young age to keep their attention while trying to teach them the lesson was not an easy task for me. During my lesson on Gymnastics I was trying to go over the cues for the pencil roll. As I was going over the cues I had one of the students I had two different incidences go on close to the same time. The first one was a had a young boy start crying and run into the corner screaming, “I don’t want anyone to watch me.” If that wasn’t a test on my nervous I had a little girl start yelling at that same boy, “do you know how dumb you look right now.” This was a surprise for me and I didn’t really know how to handle the situation. During my time in teaching I had two girls get into a shoving match over one girl looking at the other. These situations really brought out my weakness during my time as a student teacher this semester. On the other side of this I felt I had a big strength during my time teaching. One of the biggest strengths I had during my time was my time management and the structure of my lessons. I was very intentional when it came to how I structed my lessons and staying on track when it came to time management. I made sure that I kept on track when it came to the set induction and closure because I know I am a talker and I wanted to make sure I was able to get into my lesson, so I made a point to keep my set induction to a three-minute max and did the same for my closure to my lesson. When it came to the lesson I made sure I gave the time to learn the skills and teach to the standards more than I did just to do an application game. There were some specific things I really wanted to focus on during this semester. I really wanted to improve with what I think was my greatest weakness classroom management. After every teach I would watch the video of the teach and go over my lesson plan to see how I could improve during the semester but what I really focused on was the classroom management. I would look at what I did well and what I really needed to improve on and how I could improve on it. Once I found what I did wrong or not so well I would practice it and then learn from it and use what I learned on my next teach using the different strategies I would try. Some would work, and some would not but still keep focusing on that classroom management.
PHED 3671: Reflection 2 – Effective Teaching
The central focus for the content I taught in my lesson was for the students to be able to perform locomotor movement patterns to use in many sports and activities. The students will know different types of locomotor movements that are used in sports and activities. The students will know how to use each of them. The types of locomotor skills include running, hopping, skipping, and jumping. During the lesson, for my psychomotor domain, I was looking for the students to perform basic locomotor skills and attain competency in a variety of activities. The way I had them achieve this by the students demonstrate a locomotor pattern consisting of critical elements. I was able to observe the objective be completed, that is how I was able to make sure the students have addressed the psychomotor standard I was trying to achieve during my lesson. When it came to the cognitive domain, I was looking for the students to perform basic locomotor skills and attain competency in the variety of locomotor and sports style activities. My goal for the students when it came to the cognitive domain, at the end of the lesson, I asked the students to recite the critical elements and cues to me verbally. They were able to do this, so it showed me that they remembered the cues throughout the class as they were practicing the skill. Regarding the student’s emotional safety, I provided the students with multiple practices that will ensure that they were comfortable. First, I made sure to give very in-depth introductions that I believed layout exactly how to do the tasks, and where they will be doing them at and in what order. As for my student’s physical safety, this was mainly taken care of through well thought out and implemented safety statement. In order to properly implement my safety statements, ' I needed to do two things. One, clearly and soundly introduce it at the beginning of the lesson. Then I also made sure to remind the students of it, throughout the entire lesson. When I did these two things I made sure that the students were aware of the physical safety requirements of the lesson.
PHED 3671: Reflection 3 – Differentiation
When it came to my students prior academic learning I was able to conclude a few things that helped me guide my choices when it came to the learning tasks. I found out most of my students were kinesthetic learners, meaning they prefer to learn by moving and doing action. After I learned this information I now know I can start my future lessons off by doing demonstrations, then get right into the practicing skills. After talking to the student’s, I now know that many of them play basketball and football in the community youth sports programs. That means many of the time the students come to class with knowledge of a particular skills. This type of things can have its benefits and its downfalls. The benefits could be that they have prior knowledge of the skills and can spend more time getting better on those skills. The downside to this is that the students might have been taught the wrong fundamentals to the movements. This guided my choices with the way I used equipment and learning task because based on their skills and prior knowledge I was able to get deeper into the lesson and the skills needed to help the students learn new skills. My instructional strategy was mostly a practice and self-check approach. The reason I did this was because most of my students already knew the locomotor skills and were sports oriented already. When it came to the lower skilled students or the ones with IEP’s those students I had to take a more hands on approach when it came to the material. That consisted of a more one on one when it came to the feedback, and more of a direct teaching and grouping during the lessons. When it came to grouping I would put some of the high skilled students with the lower skilled, so they were able to blend, and the higher skilled students would assist me in helping the lower skilled students. That really helped the students understand the cues and critical features and movements of the lessons. During the lessons I noticed students were having some trouble with the proper motion of the gallop skill. Only about 5 students out of the 25 were able to complete this with the cues. The other students either knew the cues and not how to perform the motion or could perform the motion but didn’t get the whole part of the cue for galloping. To help with this common mistake I will go over the skill and cues more in-depth with proper examples how to perform the skill. I believe hearing and seeing this at the beginning of the lesson will have the children wanting to attempt the skill and see if they can get the cue down at the same time. The next part I will have to use more visual aids that demonstrate the skills with the cues or the cues. Having that visual with give the students something to reference if they are having trouble or forget the cues to the skill being taught during the lesson.