Week Five

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 lose and will point fingers at anyone but themselves to make them feel better about losing. This was my biggest challenge to wrapping our flag football unit this week. Reaching my goal regarding student lead during our tourney takeover was a success. Students were given roles such as playing different positions, score keeper, and referee. Students bought into these roles by Wednesday and Thursday. One thing I did this week that was beneficial for me was that on Friday when I was videoing for my 1st video assignment for class we did a Fitness Gram testing. I am usually pretty comfortable doing these but on Friday we did stretched arm hang which I've never done before. So it was beneficial to get that experience doing that and now moving forward I have a more clear idea of what to do next time. Lastly, I set another goal to make more clear lesson plans. I had the opportunity to sit down with my cooperating teacher and principal and have them examine one of my lesson plans. They both gave me positive and helpful feedback. My goal for next week is to start videotaping my edtpa. I will be starting a new unit come next Tuesday. This gives me time to set up lesson plans and get organized over the weekend for a long month of edtpa.

Classroom Confidential - Schmidt Chapter 2

This chapter discussed a lot of key points about creating a classroom culture of Eptness. This is the idea of using students to their full potential for helping the classroom thrive together. Students come into classrooms with all types of potential but a great teacher knows how to maximize that potential and shape all students into being productive members of their classroom. Another takeaway from Schmidt's description of Eptness is that even though school districts have their own particular rules, teachers must create their own rules and expectations within their own classroom on top of the schools rules. A few behaviors I read in chapter two and plan to use include expectations, encouragement, and feedback. I believe using all three of these behaviors can be powerful to making a successful classroom. Expectations sets the tone of the class early on in the year. It gives the students a clear understanding of how things will be done. Encouragement because physical education deals with variety of levels of students. Having teacher encouragement towards students and even peer encouragement to one another can change the environment, culture, and level of physical succession of the overall class. While feedback is important because as a whole we need to grow and adapt to our surroundings. Giving feedback to one another can only benefit classroom activities.

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