Entry 4

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12

Date: 8/28/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

 Thursday turned out to be a lot calmer than Tuesday. My planning (7:45-10:30) is starting to get easier as I establish a routine system. During this time, I planned for both Sports Medicine and AP Statistics for the next day. Most of the battle was figuring out how to use edline and making sure the students had access to it. There were a lot of internet resources our peers taught us how to use when we met for our teacher workdays at the beginning of August. I'm just now finding a little time to sort out useful and effective over the the filler systems of just trying to incorporate technology in my lesson plans. Then around 10:30, Dr. Brenner came to meet with me to catch me up from the information I missed on Tuesday's class. I was very grateful for her finding the time to help keep me in the loop as I battle all of my fall responsibilities; but I really felt like crying after she left (but I might save that for my reflection piece!). 

Upper PE - (5th, long period)

My class is starting to adjust to their new daily exercises (without complaining as much). I have to remind them time-to-time that they signed up for the class and the word physical is actually written in the course title. After they concluded their exercises, we finished up the physical fitness testing (except for the mile); Trunk Extension and Curl Ups. Since we had spent all of our PE days testing, I thought it was time to allow them to play a game that requires a lot of quick responses and decisions. The game is called Boccer and it is a combination or soccer and basketball. The students responded well to the game and I really look forward moving out of testing and more into cooperative sports! 

Middle PE - (7th)

This will be my third meeting with this specific class this week; and I'm happy to say that I actually concluded my physical fitness testing for this class too! The students all scored really well, so now it is my mission to make them improve for the post-test! 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

My upper school physical education class consists of 9th-12 graders; 15 males, 1 female. I'm still trying to figure out the students intention of signing up for the class when they complain about physical activity in general; however, they think they should be able to play basketball everyday. Is it just in a boys nature to want to play basketball or are they too scared to play other sports and possibly not succeed? Every year, I go through the same battle of trying to explain to the students that physical education does not mean free play/basketball everyday. But I do notice that on the days they get to play, they are less defiant and respond well to commands. My thought process is leading me too, maybe they need supervised recess to just have a moment to do something they enjoy during the school day. Most people have outlets, but some need a physical one to release stress and just unload your mind (I know I do). Even though I design these lesson plans for physical education and introduce them to numerous activities, none make them more happy than basketball. I continuously tweak my lesson plans to try to draw them in every year, but it also might be that I have had majority of the same students for the past 3-4 years in such a small class setting. I'm a fan of variation, but it seems I fight my students on this every year. Maybe next year, I'll have the perfect response for when this arises.