Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 3

This week was an interesting one in the fact that the majority of the week we had to ad lib most of our lessons. While two of the days we were able to run our normal lessons on badminton and pillo polo, the other three days there were activities going on through the school and we were pushed out of our activity areas by them. In these days, we had to throw together activities for our classes. During my first period, I had to put together a dutch long ball game. It went well and the students were able to stay active throughout. During my 4th period class, we joined one of the other classes and had a fitness unit put together for these days. The students would rotate through stations that consisted of lower ab work, jump rope, jogging, and upper ab work. This specifically fits into 19.A.4b with the students staying physical active and using repetitive motions.  With the last class, we also joined with another class to play a big kickball game. This was a bit more of a slower pace as there was not as much movement going on by the students and we had to push a bit more to make sure the students were participating.
The one thing that I would like to try to work on my is having the students develop more of a strategy in pillo polo as there is not much passing right now and just wild hitting the ball. Talking the the students and having them do some passing drills down the court will hopefully help this out. This also fits into 19.C.4b.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching week 2

From the outset of my student teaching, this week was going to be a big week. Week 2 is when I was going to start to take over classes from my cooperating teachers. I was very excited to take control of the courses and make them my own. My one cooperating teacher made a good point with taking the classes over early on. With Me assuming the classes early on, the students will see me as the teacher from the beginning and we will not have to transfer the roles. So far, the strategy has seemed to pay off. The students in my classes have responded well to me as the teacher and listen well. The classes that seem to be going the best are my freshman classes. I feel that the freshman are still new to the high school scene and are still trying to not cause trouble. My strength class that consists of juniors and seniors are the ones that I seem to have to push more. Being that they have been there for over 3 years, it seems that these students feel that they have a bit more of a run of the place and they do not have to do as much work.
One other things that happened this wee is I was able to sit down with the department chair to be able to pick her brain and get an idea on how she views P.E.'s direct today. I was also able to find out who she thinks is her strong teachers so I will be able to go to them and find out what their philosophies are and make sure that I can find as many views as possible. I was able to tell her my ideas about starting a cycling class in a school as well as evolving the strength program so that they student would be able to put their own workout programs together by the end of the semester.
Some of my goals moving forward in the next few weeks are going to be finding ways to work technology more into my lessons as well and find a way to differentiate my lessons from the normal lessons that are being taught by the teachers that are there now. In the education world, you have to find a way to stand out and make your own mark, and I want to find a way to do that sooner than later.

Student Teaching Week #1

My First week of student teaching has been an exciting yet exhausting experience. I am placed at an elementary school with my cooperating teacher being the only Physical Education teacher in the school. This week we began a two-week basketball unit. Tuesday, we began developing dribbling and ball handling skills. On Wednesday we continued to improve upon said skills through physical activity by the name of “Dribbling for Treasure.” On Thursday we began developing the students’ cognitive and psychomotor knowledge of the chest, bounce, and overhead passes. Friday was a “Fun Friday” lesson for the students, which we allowed the students to participate in a shooting activity, “Around the World.” During the lesson, I used this time to pre-assess my students on their psychomotor ability to perform the jump shot, set shot, and layup, which will be implemented into next week’s lesson plans.

            Having prior knowledge of the cooperating teacher and the students of the school while working as a substitute in the past, the cooperating teacher feels comfortable with me as an educator in her classroom and, as such, has already incorporated me into the lead teaching role as of the 9:40 AM class, Wednesday. To date, I have already led 25 classes, and have implemented one of my own lesson plans (developing proper chest, bounce, and overhead pass technique,) themed around the cooperating teacher’s style while following two of the cooperating teacher’s lesson plans. The cooperating teacher has been extremely valuable, assessing my teaching ability while in her office, and offering me various types of feedback for improvement in my teaching.

            The first full day of teaching was rather nerve-wracking. I lost a sense of time in my first class, being five minutes late, and the homeroom teacher had to come in to let me know. Every class after that was out on time, however, I did not leave time for reflection and closure. According to my corresponding teacher, reflection is the most important activity in a daily lesson. It allows the teacher to gauge the student level of knowledge of the content, allow the students to unwind, and create a complete feeling of inclusion within the student/teacher relationship.

            Students have been respectful, with a willingness to follow direction and have demonstrated a cognitive and psychological understanding of the knowledge being asserted within the lesson by myself. I have been noticing that, through the incorporation of constant review and reflection throughout and at the end of each lesson (a portion of the class my cooperating teacher has specifically pointed out as necessary to knowledge retainment and a part of the Danielson model her curriculum is designed around) the majority of students are demonstrating apparent high percentages of knowledge retainment through formative assessments. Our goal for next week is to achieve a 28-point increase in average on between the basketball pre-test taken last Monday, and the post-test to be taken next Thursday.

            I have come to notice the style in which I wish to teach in heavily resembles that of my cooperating teacher, which has made working with her extremely insightful and pleasurable. Each lesson, the teacher incorporates either content-specific vocabulary terms (word wall), Heath related information such as knowledge in the bodies systems, and ways to improve physical health, and nutrition information to aid the students is making proper nutritional choices. Before, this is something I had never thought of incorporating into an elementary setting. However, seeing the effects the information has on the students, I fully expect to incorporate into my own teaching. For example, on Thursday I spoke to the students on the importance of water and its effect on the human body. This morning, I had five new students with water bottles in the classroom, with three of them coming to me to explain their choice was based on the three minutes I committed to water importance.

The cooperating teacher holds a strong belief that students should be self-sufficient when it comes to their ability to take care of themselves and has created an environment which strongly encourages students to learn within themselves. Her warm-up activity centers are completely student-centered, where the small groups work as a team completing partner based physical activities.

As stated before, with the oncoming summative assessment of student knowledge in basketball coming next Thursday, I am hoping to learn that my ability to lead a classroom and exchange the knowledge necessary to warrant student success on the assessment is noticeable. My cooperating teacher has stated that the two 1^st grade classes are demonstrating proficient growth in the psychomotor abilities at the level of which she would aspire, and I hope the cognitive abilities are just as noticeable in the summative. Through next week, my goals are to continue to establish the student/teacher connection between the students and myself and establish the expectations I hold to the students as well as continue to withhold the cooperating teacher’s expectations as well. I also plan on implementing at least to more of my own lesson plans into the unit and hope to discover that the plans I wish to create for my future students are as engaging and educational as the lessons currently being used by my cooperating teacher.

For Friday’s activity, “Around the World,” in accordance with IPTS section 3,  (3D - understands when and how to adjust plans based on outcome data, as well as student needs, goals, and responses,) in order to establish an accurate opportunity to children of lesser physical strength in the younger grades (1-2), playground balls of a lighter weight and hula hoops hung from the backboard in addition to the regulation sized rims and basketballs were readily available to allow students to perform the lesson at a successful rate of completion as those with proficient to exceptional strength for said age group. This also allowed me to accurately assess students’ ability to identify the key component of basketball of accuracy.

 Throughout the duration of all classes, in accordance IPTS standard 4, learning environment, classroom management is evident with my use of words, phrases, and maneuvers throughout the lesson that promotes safety and allows students positivity without facing hazardous situations. For example, when I blow the whistle students are to place the basketball between their feet. When the whistle is blown, I always point out the first student I see listening to direction and reward them by commending them to the class and giving a fist bump. This gesture, I have noticed, has become a game to the students. Students are placing the ball between their feet at the sight of the whistle to be the first one to be seen following directions. I am constantly rewarding positive behavior as opposed to exposing negative behavior.

My goals for this week are to incorporate more technology in the classroom with the possibility of video-based examples, and electronic gifs to play during practice activities to visually aid in education, and better establish a comfortability in time management within my classroom.

Week 1 of student teaching

This has been an interesting and exciting week starting my student teaching experience. While getting to know all of the new faces and learning about the procedures of Andrew High School has been fast and fun, is has been a slow week as far as classes go. Within physical education, the first week of a semester is usually slow paced. This week we have introduces ourselves and talked about the overview of the class on day one. On day two, the students found their gym lockers, bought uniforms, as well as locks. During the third day, we walked through the syllabus and talked about expectations of the students for the class. Finally on Friday, the students dressed out for the first time and we had an active day where the students just had to stay active for the whole period either playing basketball, walking, or anything else athletic based. It was unique to see that now it is required to have a CPR unit (which we will have as our third unit) as one of IPTS within physical education (15-6). This was something that was not active during my high school career
One class that I am part of is an adaptive physical education class where we are working with special education students from Andrews, as well as other schools. I can already tell that this is going to be the class I enjoy the most. Working with these students just puts a smile on your face and it is hard to have a bad day after leaving that class. They enjoy the smallest things and appreciate anything you do for them. Watching and helping the students in the adaptive class while they were working with their tutors seeing how many hits they could get in a badminton unit was amazing. No matter if they hit is once, or twenty times, the students were all smiles and excited to try again.
Outside of the classes, I can already tell that I am going to have a bit of an issue with navigating the P.E. teachers. There are many of the male teachers that are against more instruction and evaluations through tests or quizzes, while there is another female P.E. teacher that goes to the other spectrum with this. Talking with one of the male P.E. teachers, I have found out that the department chairperson wants more of diving into why we are doing the activities and not as much of relying on sole physical activity. Seems like this would fit into the IPTS physical education standard 20.A.4a where it talking about interpreting the effects of physical activity on the students' health and fitness related levels.  I am going to have to find a nice middle ground to appeal to the department chair so I hopefully gain a job here after I complete my student teaching.
Regardless of everything, these next 15 weeks are going to be exciting, interesting, and enlightening. For this next week, my main goal is to establish a good report with the students as I will be taking the classes over starting Monday. I want to make sure they view me as the teacher and make sure that I execute the lessons as close to the letter of the Andrew unit plans as possible. Overall, while I am here I plan to meet as many new people as I can, pick as many brains that I can, and make sure that I am coming out a much better and more prepared teacher than I was going in.