adaptive/elementary continued

Continuing on Elementary and Adaptive education

Over the last couple of weeks I have continued to work with my Adaptive student (Peter).  I feel that Peter and I are definitely a little more comfortable with each other and it is a really good feeling to know that I am making some progress with something that I am so new at.  In my last few lessons that I have been working on with Peter we have been really focusing on his fitness and improving his loco motor skills and even getting him to talk a little more.  I have been getting Peter to talk a little more by having him count during the exercises rather than me always doing it.  Peter’s loco motor skills have slightly improved, however it’s pretty hard to get him to really try because he always just wants to run.  I found that the best way to get him to really try is just to do it with him.  It never hurts to break a little sweat; after all we are inspiring to be physical education teachers.  My comfort level with adaptive students has definitely improved a lot since day 1 adaptive lab which I am very happy about because I was extremely nervous on that first day.  I have done about seven lessons with Peter so far and we have only had probably two really bad days.  One thing that I have noticed is that Peters mood really affects his performance in that day’s lesson.  Theirs been times where he walked in to lab and was just not happy from the start and we had a really tough day.  However when he walks in with a big smile on his face I know that we are going to have a good day.  Something I learned from taking this Adaptive class is that you always have to plan a lot more for your lesson plan than you think.  My student gets bored very easily and I always have to have a backup plan for him otherwise he will just lie down on the floor and not do anything.  I have a few more weeks left with Peter and my next lesson is Halloween theme which I am excited for!

Elementary Observation

Last time I went to the elementary school to observe the physical education teacher gave me and my partner the opportunity to lead two different classes in a warm up activity.  The grade level we got to work with was second and third graders.  We decided to do a tag game because at that age I figured most kids love to play tag.  For the first class we played a game called “line tag”.  The rules of this game are that you have to run along the lines of the gym and you cannot fall off or you’re frozen.  If you get frozen on the liens it then becomes a wall where no other student can come across you.  The way we modified this game was whenever I blew my whistle they had to do the loco motor skill that we shouted out such as; jumping, hopping, skipping, galloping etc.  I think that the tag game was pretty successful, however next time we need to figure out something for the students to do when they are frozen because I noticed that they were getting bored very easily when they were not doing anything besides standing still.  For the next class I decided to switch up the tag game and play something different.  So we played “super hero tag”.  This game has the same exact rules as freeze tag except when you get tagged you freeze into the pose of your favorite super hero, and to get unfrozen another classmate just has to mirror the pose that you are frozen in.  Overall I think that this tag game was much more successful than the line tag because the main factor that the students can be unfrozen and rather quickly too.  We ended up staying for one more class to observe the fourth graders and I’m glad I stayed because they played a game called “continuous tag” which I really liked and definitely plan on using in a future lesson.  I go back to observe this Friday and I am pretty excited because not only do I get to do a new warm up with the students I also get to lead them in stretching,