Student Teaching

This week at Peotone Junior High has been a week of learning and adapting. This week we started a new unit. This unit was completely new to me because I've never played it nor taught it. We are playing Ultimate Frisbee. The one takeaway that I've even told all my students is that we are going to learn together as it may consider many trial and errors. The reason why I include adaptation is because this Friday we had picture day. This and the rain created for me and my classes to adapt. Our plans had to change and we were not aloud to go outside or use most of the gym. We could only occupy a small area with 2 basketball hoops. This was a great learning experience for me as this will happen numerous times throughout a school year at all districts. My set goal was to simple start filming my lessons for edTPA. I did do this early on this week. It was nerve racking, but I believe the videos turned out well. My new goal for next week is to attend an athletic event at the school. This...

Week five of student teaching has been another interesting one. We are wrapping up our first unit; flag football. So in other words, it was game week or what I call tourney takeover. Knowing this week was going to be fun but tough at the same time. I created two fields so we could maximize our time and play two games at once so nobody will be sitting out minus score keeper and referee. This week instead of me doing score and referee I've assigned students roles to become score keeper and referee. Each student has had the opportunity to become referee and scorekeeper. My observation to how well they do these roles have gone into the grade book under our leadership category. I believe giving students certain opportunities like being a referee is very beneficial for many different reasons. Reaching my goals for this week were for the most part met. Wrapping up a flag football unit can be difficult knowing the competitiveness with this age group is so strong. Students don't like to...

Week four of student teaching has given me ups and downs. This week we wrapped up our skills work in our flag football unit and I have now created the football fields for real flag football games. This week we only used one field rather than both. While only two teams can play at once, I had the other two cheering on the other teams. At times, this became the most difficult part of this weeks game play. Students initially were good and helpful to other teams on the field but by the end of the week they were being more of a distraction. Thus, brings me to my goal I was hoping to reach last week. I believe I fell short in reaching this goal because my goal was to keep students actively engaged in some sort of way. Next week, as there will be two games going on all four teams will be engaged in activity therefore I will then reach my week four goal. With experience, I firmly believe I will be able to create a more beneficial classroom by keeping all individuals active in some sort of mann...

Week three of student teaching was filled with improvement. This week I had the opportunity to instruct two parts of the Fitness Gram testing, the sit and reach flexibility test and the one-mile run. As it was a short week, we did those two tests and two days of our flag football unit which is progressing really well. We started getting into game action with a bit of a twist during both days of flag football. Setting up the lines for the football field and preparing the footballs, or in other words setting up for the game was the toughest challenge for me. It was time consuming and the preparation before school wasn't well planned. Students have been looking forward to this part of the flag unit for the last week which led to a fun and engaging environment. My biggest takeaway from this week is that as a teacher you can be as creative as you would like with your units throughout a school year. Being a part of this flag football unit has allowed me to see that. One main personal ins...