I said P.E is in the house

It’s Friday the 13th, MUHAHAHAHA!!!! It was just another day in the life of a bright and upcoming P.E teacher. On Friday I had to teach a section in the sport of Ultimate Frisbee. My section included adding a defender to the tosser and also making sure the students knew that in the game of Ultimate Frisbee you can only take three steps. Dr. Yang (our professor) had us wired to a MP3 voice recorder, so we heard ourselves teach. Dr. Yang also had us type out a verbal transcript (click to view verbal transcript) of the lesson.

Dr. Yang has us type out all of this because when you write what you say you tend to see more errors. One thing I noticed about the lesson I taught was that I repeated a lot of commands. At first I thought to myself, "Why am I repeating myself so much?" As I gave it more thought I noticed that I repeating myself was more of a good thing. This is because, as a student, I noticed that sometimes I catch myself saying "What did this teacher just say?" So when I’m repeating myself, on top of being a loud speaker, I reinforce what I say by repeating it.

As far as feedback goes, I greatly improved from the last lesson I taught; but there is definitely more room for improvement. One of the aspects of feedback that I improved in was giving a lot of personal feedback. I gave personal feedback to 7 students out of 16, this means that with two more names I would have made it over 50 percent, which is the recommended number (but of course you want to exceed the bare minimum). I also gave a lot of indirect feedback; this could have been better. I caught myself plainly saying good job a lot. Now I’m not saying that a plain old good job is bad; it is just that when you pinpoint the actual skill that the student is performing well, the feedback becomes that much more effective. For example, Tommy is throwing the baseball fast and accurate to the catcher; instead of saying "good job Tommy," you could say "great throw and accuracy Tommy." Now the student knows what he is doing well.

Another aspect of teaching P.E that I improved in was the using students for demonstration. In all two of my activities I used students to demonstrate the task that was coming up. What I failed to do is to use students of both genders. Using students of both genders is good because sometimes Girls tend to say "well he could do that because he is a boy"; or even boys sometimes would say "well that’s a girly activity." So when you put students of both gender to demonstrate it takes away that thought that might be in the students head.

I believe that as far as checking for understanding goes I did a pretty good job. At the end of the class I made sure they knew the three critical cues for the day and the way that I checked for the understanding was also effective. As far as the introduction to the lesson goes, it is always good to loosen up your students. So when I said "When I say "P" you say "E"" this was one of the many ways you can get your class loose and excited for the day’s lesson. I also incorporated that saying two more times throughout the class. This is good because now when students see you they will want to get "jiggy with it"; so the saying also works as a hook to keep students eager to come back to your class.

SO WHEN I SAY "P" YOU SAY "E"

ME: "P"

CLASS: "E"

ME:"P"

CLASS: "E"

EVERYBODY: GET JIGGY WITH IT, GET JIGGY WITH IT!!!