Goal Seven, Different Levels of Teaching PE

During my Physical Education Classes I have been required to teach at several local elementary schools many different times. The children have been from an age range of 7-12. Before this experience I had experience with older students ranging from age 12-16.

In the beginning of the semester I was thinking that I wanted to teach middle school to high school aged students. Now that I have had experience teaching elementary aged students I believe that I would prefer teaching younger children. I thought I wanted to teach high school students because I knew that students would be at level three during this age level. When children are at level three in physical education they are capable of developing sports skills. I thought this was what I wanted to teach but now that I have worked with children in levels two and three I feel like I would really enjoy this. I had so much fun and learned so much while I was teaching the younger children.

I placed this blog under personal development, goal seven, because I feel that experimenting with teaching students of different age levels shows that I will take responsibility for my own personal development. This is also under personal development because not only because I have been experimenting with different age levels but I have obtained a lot of knowledge about myself. I believe that it is important that I obtain as much knowledge as possible about teaching all levels of students because I want to be prepared to teach any level of students.

Goal 2 PED 244

Above is a picture of some of my classmates participating in another cooperative activity during my PED 244 class.
The activity was called “moving the world”. We were each divided into four teams and placed in each corner of the gym. The task was to move the world around the gym without touching the ball with your hands. As the activity progressed the instructor would add more difficulties for example, we would have to walk like a crab or we could not use our hands or our feet to move the ball. As you can see one of my peers was trying to move the ball by blowing it with air from his mouth.
During this activity I learned about constructivism. I feel that this was constructivism because we had to each build upon our previous knowledge of what we knew we could do to move the ball by following the given directions. It was constructivism because as we participated, we learned from our previous experiences and watching our classmates perform the skills. This resulted in us being able to develop a technique, was better than the first.

This is under, understanding of content; goal two, because I have developed a better understanding and in depth understanding of constructivism which is a part of the content for this class. I know that constructivism is like scaffolding; you start with a base of knowledge and you constantly build upon that as learn and participate in educational experiences. As an educator I will keep in mind that when I receive my students they will each already have some knowledge because I know that no one has a clean slate as I learned during the balls and ramps activity in my education class.

Inquiry in Physical Education

This is a photo of my classmates participating in a game known as “life boat” in my PED-244 class.

The activity in the picture was a cooperative activity. It was an activity that built community and developed communication skills. The object of the game was to help each member of your team to get to the life boat. The only instruction we were given was to save each member of our team from the sinking boat or area behind the yellow line and we had to get them into the boat or the bluw mat without touching the water (the floor) or the sharks would eat us. We were each supplied with a jump rope, a scooter and a boat (blue mat) and the rest was up to us.

During this activity I noticed that as my friend prepared to teach this cooperative activity to the class, she was trying to think of ways to tell the student how to save each other. Then I realized that this was a perfect example for inquiry and I shared with her my inquiry experiences from my education class and suggested to her that the activity would be much more educational if she would give the students a minimun amount of instruction and allow the students to find the solutions on their own. I was apart of the class and while I was participating in this activity I observed each group of students working together to solve the task. It was very intresting to see all the different techniques they created to solve the task.

I developed as an educator during this activity because after doing this activity I feel more capable of creating environments of inquiry and being able to recognize situations that can be used as inquiry. I also learned during this activity that inquiry is a very important tool to use while teaching students. I know that if the students would have been give specific instructions they would not have developed cooperative and communication skills. Because of this I will definitly include inquiry into my classrooms. That is why this post is published under the inquiry category.

Teach Teach TEACH!! (Goal 5)

In this picture they are working on things we can teach with the activities we did while using the pumpkins to cook many different things.

The activity in this picture was to try and think of as many activity strands as possible that could be taught through the cooking experiences. This was a little confusing but then once we started brain storming and thinking about it we came up with many different ways to use the cooking activities to teach different strands.


This activity is connected to diversity. I feel like this is an example of diversity because this shows that almost anything you do can be used to teach many different subjects or strands. For example by doing this cooking activity we could learn about the history of pumpkins, measuring which is part of math, cooking which is practical living, nutritional information which is health and Drawing the activity which is art. There is so much more that we could teach. With this activity I know that there more ways to teach and learn than the traditional way which includes sitting in a seat and reading the information.

Auto Pilot or Autonomy?

In this picture we are beginning to make pumpkin candy. We are melting the butter and getting ready to cut the pumpkin into ½ inch pieces.

The activity we were doing was making pumpkin candy. I had never heard of pumpkin candy until this day but I must say it is amazing. The activity required that first melt butter into the pan then cut the pumpkin into ½ inch pieces. After we cut up the pumpkin we added it to the butter to allow it to cook for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes had passed we added maple syrup, sugar, cinnamon and ginger to the pumpkin pieces to sugar coat it. We then let it cool down over night so that we could eat it during Thursday’s class.

During this activity I observed that everyone was working together as a team and doing the activities on their own. I noticed that Bobby did not need to constantly give instructions to the students for them to complete their tasks.

During this activity I developed a better understanding of the content we are required to obtain from this class. I believe this was an example of autonomy in a classroom because everyone was busy doing their task and working together while Bobby was going around, taking pictures. She wasn’t really needed for the students to complete their tasks. However, she is needed in the classroom because she so much fun to be around.

Pumpkin with a Sugar Coating.....Mmm Mmm GOOOOD!

In this picture we are beginning to make pumpkin candy. We are melting the butter and getting ready to cut the pumpkin into ½ inch pieces.

The activity we were doing was making pumpkin candy. I had never heard of pumpkin candy until this day but I must say it is amazing. The activity required that first melt butter into the pan then cut the pumpkin into ½ inch pieces. After we cut up the pumpkin we added it to the butter to allow it to cook for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes had passed we added maple syrup, sugar, cinnamon and ginger to the pumpkin pieces to sugar coat it. We then let it cool down over night so that we could eat it during Thursday’s class.

During this activity I observed that everyone was working together as a team. I noticed that not only was everyone building a community and communication skills but they were also learning. They were helping each acquire they information they needed to complete their task.

During this activity I developed a better understanding of inquiry. I believe this was an activity of inquiry because not everyone in the group had experience with cooking yet everyone asked questions and used their resources such as the other students who had cooked before.

Philosoophy?

In this photo I created a paint document to display a part of my philosophy that I have encountered and developed more thoroughly.

When I first created my teaching philosophy I said, “I believe that students learn by doing hands on activities; active learning, I will be sure to incorporate these types of activities into my class.” After having the opportunity to take HLT-215 which is also known as Significant Issues of Health I have developed or expanded my beliefs about active learning and hands on activities.

I have developed my philosophy during my health class because during this class we are not actively moving or doing hands on activities but we are actively learning. We are actively learning by having in depth discussions about issues in health. While having these in depth discussions each person in our class is making connections with their life to the issue being discussed? When I make a connection with my life to the issues I understand the issue and information the instructor is relaying and I retain the information easier than the information I obtain by reading the chapters. What I now know is that active learning is not only hands on activities. My philosophy would be changed to; I believe that students learn in many different ways. They learn through inquiry, making connections, going into depth thoughts and also by asking questions. Active learning is not the only was students learn. Because I now know that students learn in many different ways I will be sure to be very diverse with the activities and learning environments a set up for my students.