PE is Phenomenal Excitement

Special Olympics Plunge

2010-12-17T08:34:00.000-08:00

Onedia Lake near Syracuse, NY was the location of this wonderful event. 400 people planned to plunge into oneida lake in the freezing temperature. I attended the event with Ryan Strader because his hometown was nearby. It was a very interesting experience. We arrived early to set up and stayed later to help take down. It was very cold to say the least but was for a worthy cause. I hope someday that with my coaching certificate I can get more involved with the Special Olympics to make a difference in someone's life.

The Visitor Review

2010-12-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

Recently I had watched the movie "The Visitor." It is a very insightful and interesting movie. It was more of a movie to demonstrate and show how immigration and people are treated in these modern post 9/11 times. After 9/11, the United States had look tougher on immigration and people being in the country illegally. This movie shows the life of an older college professor that is recently widowed. His wife was a talented pianist and he is destined to learn how to play the piano to remember her and fill that void that she left. After constant failures of not being able to play the piano he decides to give up. He is required to go to a conference in New York City by his administration at the school. He shows up in NYC at an apartment he owned but hadn't lived in for a very long time. He arrives to notice 2 immigrants living in his place and he chooses for them to stay with him because they have nowhere else to go. He begins to fancy the male's drum and wants to learn how to play it. He starts to practice more and more and then plays in a park with the young male. After entering the subway on their way home the man is accused of entering the subway illegally. He is held in an immigration building in NYC. The older man named Walter decides he will attempt to help this man get out of the immigration building by hiring a lawyer. The man's mom shows up worried about her son and Walter has her stay in his apartment with him. Walter starts to develop a relationship with the woman and abruptly the man is deported out of the country.
This movie is a great message to how people are treated in this country based on their appearance. This country was built around immigrants from various countries specifically in western Europe. Since 9/11 the Country has become very difficult for immigrants to receive clearance to stay in the country as a citizen. I believe that if a person is causing no harm to the country that they should be able to stay. But I am also glad to be in a country and know that certain precautions are being taken everyday to ensure my safety.

BlindSight movie

2010-12-01T19:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight I attended a Damn good movie night in Park Center hosted by Dr. Davis. The movie of choice was title BlindSight. This movie was centered towards individuals with visual impairments and most of which were completely blind. Erik Weihenmayer was the first blind man to ever climb Mt. Everest. He was the focal point of the movie because he was contacted by a woman in charge (Sabriye Tenberken) of running a school in Tibet called Braille Without Borders. This is an underdeveloped city in Asia that has a plethora of individuals who are blind. Sabriye wrote Erik a letter explaining to him the situation of their school and how much of an inspiration Erik was to her students who are blind. Erik thought it was not enough to just show up at that school for the students but instead planned a trek into the Himalayas to climb a high peak. The students were thrilled to do this adventure and be like their hero Erik. For most of the adventure the students did well but when the elevation got higher the students began to be sick and they could not reach the top of the mountain. Erik stated at the end of the movie that the friendships he made and being around the students was an amazing experience and was much more important than actually making it to the top of the mountain.

I believe that this story is a true story of triumph. In Tibet, people who are blind are seen as possessed by some entity and there blindness is frowned upon and they are excluded. It is important to make a film like this to show that individuals with disabilities can be just like and do similar things than individuals without disabilities. Just because they may do things differently doesn't mean that they can't do anything. I would advise anyone to watch this movie because it is very inspirational.

St. Mary's lab #6

2009-04-28T19:25:00.000-07:00

The activity that we did in the final lab was based on an Easter theme. I think that we did a really good job with the activity. It started with Kylie pretending she was the Easter bunny and that Sean the big bad ogre stole all her eggs. They had to do an obstacle course type activity. They had to roll over a mat and crawl through a tunnel. After that they had to leap over mats and then cross a balance beam and jump from pad to pad that were on the swamp. Once they got through all the obstacles they got to take an egg back from the Easter basket and needed to skip back to give them to the Easter bunny. This activity was short and it could have only lasted for about 3 minutes but we found ways of making the activity last longer and more interesting so the children would not get bored. We would steal eggs back from the Easter bunny acting like we were helping the ogre steal the eggs. The kids really did get involved in the activity and each child seemed like they enjoyed it.
St. Mary's was a great experience for me to learn things about kids that I did not notice before.

St. Mary's lab #5

2009-04-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

Another activity we did was guard the castle. We modified this game to fit the certain objectives that were supposed to be accomplished for the day. We had cones set up with hula hoops around them. The kids had to kick or roll the ball at the cones on the other team’s side to knock them over. This game ended up working out better than we had thought. The only issue was that the children were cheating by throwing the ball instead of rolling it like they were supposed to.
This was a good lab because we worked well as a group and it was a team effort and we each came up with good ideas. At the beginning of the lab we knew what we were going to do but each of us had our own thing we were going to do to it to make it more fun for the children. I enjoyed working with the children at St. Mary's it gave me opportunity to get more experience.

St. Mary's lab #4

2009-04-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

St. Mary’s has been a great experience for me to realize how it is to get hands on experience teaching physical education. I think one of the biggest challenges I faced was the second lab where we used the parachute. One of the problems was getting the kids to focus on the game being played and less of hiding underneath the parachute and shaking it when they weren’t supposed to. One thing as well that would happen would be kids not playing by the rules while they were doing an activity. Or doing a part of an activity before they were supposed to. Another thing that was hard was getting every kid involved. Some kids only wanted to do certain things like play basketball and wouldn’t give any other games any chance. For the most part though it was good to be there and an educational experience. I gained much knowledge about children and how they will act in different situations and environments.
It is important to get children involved as much as possible. Another thing also to avoid children sitting out on activities adapt the activity to make it something they may enjoy. What I found also helps is when you have different activities happening throughout the gym such as some kids playing basketball and some playing soccer. Another thing is having some sort of discipline. At least having a loud voice helps to direct the kids in doing some activities because they won’t listen to you if you do not have a loud voice. As well not having enthusiasm in your voice doesn’t make the children listen very well to your activity and how you describe it. Sometimes you need to make yourself a kid in a sense. Make yourself interested in the activity so then you know the kids will get interested in the activity.

St. Mary's lab #3

2009-04-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

I observed Casey and Mike again and they were good at doing the different skills. They were 6 years old each and both were pretty good at sliding but with most of the students when it came down to leap they just ended up running because they wanted to do it really fast to get to the next objective. I really thought that the girls understood the skills better than the guys because they were more patient in doing the skills.
I used a calming voice that was also making things simple for their level. I try to get them excited for what is coming up next and I feel like they enjoyed it. I made a game where batman was trapped and they had to retrieve joker cards to get batman out. The kids enjoyed the game quite a bit the only problem was the Sean got jumped on afterwards and hurt. I wouldn’t try screaming to explain things because it just gets your voice tired and the kids are less likely to listen. If you seem interested in the activity more than likely they will be interested as well.
If you are corky, kids will turn to that. If you are interesting the kids will love it. One thing kids love is props and the way you implement them into your lesson. They can relate things to props better because kids at a young age are primarily visual learners. I found that certain items do not work very well such as using a parachute didn’t work very well because the students would just jump on it whenever they had the chance.

St. Mary's lab #2

2009-04-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

I believe that our activity with the parachute was not very easy. Most of the kids did not listen especially the boys did not listen because they were fascinated by the parachute. Most of the kids just shook it when they weren’t supposed to and were running underneath nonstop. I found that strategies that do work well are describing the game like it is the greatest game they will ever play. If you are not enthused teaching the game the kids will not be enthused to play the game.
The focus of lab 2 was running, hopping, and galloping. Some students didn’t hop as well as others or even correctly hop like the other kids did. Most kids do not know the difference between a hop and a jump or a leap. Most kids were trying to hop on two feet. I observed Casey and Michael and they were 6 years old. They were fairly good at doing each skill. I don’t believe that Michael knew exactly the correct way to gallop. He didn’t exactly bend his knees the whole time he was doing it. But it could be just that they do not know how to do the skills in general. But overall I believed that the age group of 6 years old is well educated physically with these skills. But you can obviously notice the difference between skill ability among kids that are more active than kids that are less active outside the school environment.

St. Mary's lab #1

2009-04-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

The group I primarily focused on for the first lab was Pre-K. I was in a room with children that were building some sort of wall with fake cardboard bricks. This was interesting because their motor skills were far advanced relative to their social skills. But as well there were differences between the different kids. For instance Zane was very social with me and the other kids. He communicated very well. At one point I learned something from Zane. I asked him what this yellow tower was with this thing on the top. With little to no hesitation he said “It’s a clock tower.” I was very impressed because he went on about how in 1918 there was a clock tower in Cortland that had burned down and he said he remembered it happening. Motor behavior is by no means directly related to social behavior. Most of the Pre-K groups of kids were very advanced socially and with motor skills. I noticed a difference between girls than boys in this group. The boys had more motor skills than the girls but the girls had incredible imaginations.
One activity that I did with one of the Pre-K students was soccer. Nikolas was kicking around a soccer ball and I attempted to play defense on him and Nik would kick it past me or between my legs. Once the ball would go past me I would run it down then attempt to dribble around Nik which ended up in him playing defense. I didn’t notice at the time what I was doing but I was teaching him fundamental motor activities such as defense and kicking the ball. This made me quite happy because I wasn’t even trying to teach him these skills I was just playing a simple game and he learned things.

Dodgeball in a School Setting

2009-02-04T12:25:00.002-08:00

I believe that Dodgeball is not necessarily a bad thing to have in a PE curriculum. There is ways of course that it could be potentially hazardous and bad for kids. If you used balls that are heavy and would hurt to be hit with of course. Also if all the best athletes in the class were on one team instead of being divided equally.
A way of integrating it into a PE class would be using light soft balls instead of a rubber ball. Another method of teaching and playing Dodgeball that my high school Physical Education program used is a variation that is more fair. The variation that my high school used was that you could not throw with your dominant hand in one round. In a new game the new rule might be that you could only throw behind the back. Another rule is making the children throw underhand. Once a person was hit with a ball that person would have to sit on the ground. If a ball rolled to them they could grab it and throw it at a person with their dominant hand. This gave an advantage to the kids that may always be the ones to get out first because they would always have a chance to get back into the game.
This is a great method that worked really well with our PE class. I was also gifted with great PE teachers who always looked for a way to get eveyone involved.