Entry 9

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12 (Sports Medicine, AP Statistics, PE (6-12))

Date: 9/5/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

Sports Medicine - (2nd and 4th, long periods)

I gave my first quiz today, and I'm a little nervous to grade it. Because I didn't want to lose a lot of instructional days to testing, I used a quiz to assess the students on Chapter 1 (Sports Medicine - The Multidisciplinary Approach) which was a majority of professions within the broad area of sports medicine. The quiz took a little longer than I expected, but I still got to introduce Chapter 2: Athletic Training. Since it was a Friday and I already gave a quiz, I decided lecture wouldn't be the best approach. To introduce the next chapter, I found a compilation of YouTube Videos that were both entertaining and informative, that we watched for the rest of class. After each video, we had a class discussion of what was relevant to them and the class. This was a successful lesson plan for both classes. 

AP Statistics -(6th, long period)

I also gave a quiz on the preliminary chapter in AP Statistics today. In my opinion, this quiz was much harder than the sports medicine but the students finished this one faster (which makes me a little nervous). But after reading through a few, I concluded that these students were better prepared which makes my heart happy for an AP class. After everyone finished the quiz, we performed a class activity to introduce us to the next Chapter. The activity - Assess the difference between male and females resting heart rate; hypothesis - males were lower. Our data actually suggested the same and we had a great discussion about all of the variables that could affect it and how the data wasn't enough to infer about a population. 

Middle PE - (7th )

Today we were supposed to take the middle school students to the complex to run the mile, but it was also post-poned due to weather. We finished up the physical fitness unit with more exercise and stretching routines. After the students finished we played End-Line Soccer. Towards the end of class, we got surprised with a fire drill, when we returned back to the gym it was time to go home. THANK GOODNESS!

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

Sports Medicine class is rather difficult in assessing students because of the grade diversity. In both classes, I have a combination of 9-12th graders and there is a huge difference in their abilities that I noticed last year when teaching in the same format. I thought I created a super easy quiz (15 fill in the blank/no word bank; 5 short answer) which seamed to be very difficult for most. I was under the impression that if every student studied at least 30 minutes, they would have no difficulties with the format or wording of the quiz, so no word bank would be needed. I haven't graded their quizzes yet, but I have a feeling I might have to address work ethics next week. My AP students are performing really well in class, and there is a major difference in the students in my Statistics class and my Sports Medicine class. I'm having difficulties with what I should expect out of my Sports Medicine students, do I push them to be more independent or just realize I have a lot more younger students in this class? I think I'll have more answers after I grade, but a little motivation to be more independent never hurt anyone!