The Worst Best Week of the Year

Before you start asking... Oh No, what went wrong, let me explain myself. I tell my students every year during the first week of school that I am so excited to be back at school with new students and especially this year with a new school. This is the absolute truth. I love my job and I feel bad for others who do not get to have the fun I have at school with my students. That right there is the problem with the first week.I tell the kids when they come for the first class, that that day will be the most I talk all year. It just has to be like that. Especially this yer not knowing when I will be leaving. I have to explain everything to them in one week where I usually break it up in to several weeks.  We have to talk about rules and procedures etc. I feel bad for them because in their mind I know they are saying to themselves "this is not PE" and I agree. Now we do get moving on the fist day playing a game at the end of class, but my goal is to have the students moving at least two thirds of the class.

So what do you do on the first day? 

Squads
The first thing I do every year is put the students into squads. Squads are lines that not only help me know what students are present and learn names quicker, but also it gives the students a specific spot to sit when I need them to sit. We are not in our squads for very long each day, but it gives the students direction when they walk in the gym. They know what is expected when they walk into the door.

Rules
 Next, we talk about is our PE Rules.  My 5 P.E. Rules are based on  the whole brain teaching model. I have done a post in the past about my rules called "Can Whole Brain Teaching Work in Your Gym". The 5 Rules that we talk about each have a hand signal that helps the student remember the rule and it also helps me out as I can tell a student what he/she is doing wrong from across the gym without having a full out conversation in gym voice mode.

Procedures
Lastly, we talk about all the other procedures that need to be discussed. How to Line up, Where to go for a fire drill and what we would do for a  lock down in case there was an intruder in the building. I try not to scare them with those ideas of a fire or lock down, but its best to know what to do if it does happen then to panic and go into chaos mode.

Before the students leave we play a game. This year we played the game aggravation. I will talk about aggravation in a later post when I talk about instant activities.

Below is a Blendspace that is an outline of the first day. I planned on using my Smartboard to display this, but it was not ready yet so we made do with the "Not Smart Board" or white board.

Guess Who's Back?

Where did you go?

Wow... so I really have missed being on here. When I started this blog I wanted it to be a showcase of all the cool innovative things I was doing in my class.   Last year just got away from me and I am now at a new school and really excited to get this going again. I will be updating my blog more often this year and using it not only as a way to spread what innovative things my classes are doing here at Doby's Bridge Elementary, but to also keep all my parents up to date with what their child is doing in PE.

Now as I say that "I'm Back", I will be leaving school very soon. My wife and I are expecting a baby girl this month. I will keep everyone informed on the process and while I know I will enjoy starting a new chapter at home, I will also be really excited about getting back and starting a new professional teaching chapter as soon as I can get back. 

So... What is New?

(Gym Smart Board will be on a cart)

Well along with being at a new school comes new toys. Now let me say when I say new school, I mean NEW... brand new! This the biggest elementary school I have ever been in. Oh and the technology! Each classroom has a SmartTV (seen to the right). These things are amazing! I had a regular smart board in my old gym, but this baby has so many updates. No more projectors means no more shadows! This thing is literally a 72 inch TV! In the Gym we will have one on a cart that can be rolled anywhere in the gym and be stored a way in the equipment room. This year I will be running all my music off an iPod Touch. No more 1990's boom box!  Oh and did I mention this school is BRAND NEW! This means new equipment. 

Well... I am going to leave you with some pictures of the new gym and surrounding areas. Get excited for a new school year!

Basketball - Dribbling (Prezi)

We started our basketball unit this week. This unit will be a five class unit that will include dribbling, passing, shooting, and two days of stations for K-2. We will have one day of review stations and one day of small sided game play for 3-5. The students are very excited about this unit and we are too. We have made our first unit Prezi to see if this would help move along the informing process. Prezi is a more active type of power point that is built online so you can view or present it anywhere you have access to a computer. Check Prezi out at www.prezi.com.

Before we introduced dribbling we went over our expectations and introduced the term of measure up to the students. Since this is my first year at a new school, we have been slowly changing some of the cues throughout the year. It was explained to the students that when the teacher says "measure up" they are to take the ball and put it between their feet. If the ball moves from their feet they are to let it go and get it when the teacher is done talking.

Dribbling 

In our dribbling lesson we had all the students get a basketball in our single classes and in our double classes we had students partner up. We taught the students about their dominant and non dominant hand and how it was important that they use both hands. There were five cues we really focused on that can be seen to the right. For K-2 we really focused on the first three cues and with 3-5 we checked for all five.

In the actual lesson we had students dribble 10 times with their dominant hand and then 10 times with their non dominant hand. We taught the students about the crossover (or V dribble because the shape of the ball makes a V) we added movement into the lesson and then had students follow a partner around the gym practicing keeping their eyes forward. The students enjoyed an activity called dribble mania. The students in the class were asked to find a ball dribble it three times and then place it back on the floor and move to a new ball. The goal for me as the teacher was to get them as much practice dribbling while also keeping their head up looking for their next ball. As students they were given the challenge of dribbling every ball in the gym three times. At the end of the lesson with the time we had left I gave the students a chance to practice ball handling tricks or skills. We showed them a video so that they would have an idea of some tricks they could try. We also mentioned that they could clap while the ball was in the air, try and spin the ball on their finger. The main goal was to get the students to be creative and share some of their tricks with a partner. The video we showed is an old Nike commercial that can be seen here ----> NIKE COMMERCIAL.

Family Fitness Night Part 2

WOW... my co-teacher did it again! Family Fitness Night was again a great success. Over 150 people attended this event and over 100 children got to experience doing fitness activities with their parents. What a great experience to have with a family and an even better sight to see as a P.E. teacher.

This semesters fitness night was a little different than last semesters in that instead of doing stations the night was split into two main events.

A Fun Night for All

One of the events was Zumbaatomic. One of our kindergarten teachers stepped up to the plate and showed off her skills teaching four 30 min groups several dances that were fun, but also very good cardiovascular workouts.  Students, their parents, and even little brothers and little sisters hopped in on the fun.

What is ZumbAtomic?

So you may have heard of Zumba, but what is Zumbatomic? Zumbatomic is a high energy fitness class packed with specially choreographed kid friendly routines and all the music kids love, like hip-hop, Reggaeton, Cumbia and more. Parents love Zumbatomic because of the effects it has on kids, increasing their focus and self confidence, boosting metabolism and enhancing coordination.

Black Light Defend the Den

Groups are split up into two teams on each side of the gym. Each team will have the same amount of pins (10-15) set up on the back line of their side. Foam balls are lined up in the middle of the gym between the two teams. On the whistle signal, teams will come to the middle, pick up a ball, and try to knock down the pins of the other side by rolling the ball. Teams may guard their pins, but they have to stand on the guard line which is marked by a tape line. Teams are not allowed to cross the center line. When a pin is knocked over it must stay down until the end of the game. Once all pins are knocked down the game is over and the game is reset to be played again. The twist we threw into the normal game of defend the den was we turned the lights out and hooked up some black lights. We then decorated the gym with neon paper, balloons, and tape.

Overall  it was a huge success and very fun for all the participants. After the event, a survey was sent out to all the participating parents. Through the survey there was some awesome feedback and ideas to make this event and any other events we do that much better in the future. 

Thank you Mrs. Dillon and Mrs. Aranda for a great  event that definitely built up the moral in the school and in the community. 

Gymnastics Part 2

In the previous post I explained how we introduce our skills for gymnastics. The four main skills we went over were balancing, rolling, jumping and and landing, and transfer of weight. While we did teach all the skills to every student in the school, our expectations were different for each grade level. While our expectations were different for what skills each grade level could do, how we assessed each grade level was different also.

Gymnastics Assessment K-2

To assess K-2 we set up several stations where the students could demonstrate their knowledge and ability to do each of the skills we had worked on during the unit. These stations included cue cards for a reminder on how to do each of skills. We as teachers walked around and visually assessed each student making sure they were using good from and following directions.

The stations are shown below:

Station 1: Transfer of Weight 

Station 2: Rolling

Station 3: Jumping and Landing 

Station 4: Balance Roll Balance

Gymnastics Assessment 3-5 

For 3-5 we use an assessment that challenges the students to create a routine concepts from all the categories we learned during our unit. Each student is responsible for their own routine. Each Routine must include a beginning balance and a different ending balance which are both held for 3-5 seconds. Between the two balances the students must include 4 different concepts that were learned during the unit. The students may also use a turn or spin and a change of speed as one of their concepts in the routine. Once the students create their routine they will then practice. When the routine is memorized and perfected the teacher will come over and grade the routines based on following directions and following the order on their routine sheet. 

Below are a few routines of different skill levels:

Gymnasitics Part 1

Sorry I have been so quiet lately. We have been working on gymnastics in all of our classes which is my favorite unit of the entire year. I got this lesson from Karen Roof (see previous post) when I was doing my student teaching a few years back. This unit is very controlled and a good change of pace. Below I am going to lay out the different lessons that we have taught this year. The first four lessons of this unit were taught the same to K-5.

Week 1 - Balancing

In our first week of gymnastics we challenged the students with the question "what is a balance?". Most of the classes went straight to talking about a balance beam. While that was not the answer we were looking for we were able to guide the students to the answer we were looking for by talking about what you do on a balance beam. The students told us that you need to have control and not fall. The definition we used for a "balance" was to stay completely still for 3-5 seconds in one position. We told the younger students we could count seconds in alligators (1 alligator, 2 alligator...) and the older students that they could count in Mississippi's, or one thousands.

We then had students practice balancing on different body parts (balance on 2 feet and 1 hand) and then on different numbers of body parts (can you balance on 4 body parts). Later in the lesson we had students move to music using different locomotor skills and we would yell out a number. When the music stopped the students would quickly get into a balance with that many body parts and hold it for 3-5 seconds.  We extended our 3-5 lesson by having the students work on partner balances. Below are a few pictures of some of the different partner balances our students came up with.


Week 2 - Rolling

In week 2 we moved on to the next skill in our unit which was rolling. We talked about 4 main types of rolls. They were the log roll, egg (side) roll, forward, and backward roll. We taught these rolls starting with the easiest (log) and moved to the hardest (backward)

Week 3 - Jumping and Landing

Before I talk about jumping I want to first thank the Town of Fort Mill for letting us use 10 recycle bins. We used these recycle bins for jumping boxes. I took the bins reinforced the tops with pieces of plywood attached with bolts through the already existing drainage holes. We taught the students to jump using a few simple steps. 1) Bend knees and swing arms back, 2) Throw arms in air and extend knees, and 3) Jump and land on two quiet feet. We taught our students that landing on two quiet feet meant landing on the balls of their feet with two bent knees. We first only allowed the students to jump and land off of the boxes. After they showed us they could do this we started letting them do other things like making shapes in the air (tucks, pikes, splits) and spins.

Week 4 - Transfer of weight

This is most of our advanced students favorite weeks. This is wear we do our mule kicks, handstands, cartwheels and round offs. We discuss that a transfer of weight is actually what the name states, transferring your weight from your hands to your feet and back to your hands again.

My next blog post will take us through Week 5 and 6 which for the younger students were stations and older students building, practicing, and performing a routine.  This will be coming very shortly!

My Inspiration

We are just now getting back into things at PKES so the blogs are coming slow. I am really excited about the gymnastics unit we are working on right now and there will be a post on the coming soon. While other posts are in progress I have decided to write a post about why I teach the way I do and what motivates each and every day.

I received my paper work to take a student teacher next year. While I was filling the paperwork out it got me thinking about why I teach P.E. and what makes it so enjoyable to me. I recently changed schools to get closer to home and could not have chosen a better situation to be in myself. I will have to give all that credit to God. I have the most amazing Principal who luckily is a former Physical Educator himself. He is true teachers principal and has produced outstanding numbers in his four years at PKES. What more could you ask for out of principal.

One of the first few days of school we were both standing on duty and he had just finished talking to a parent. I looked at him and said "I don't know how you do it, I could not and would never want your job." That is when the question came up that sparked this post. He looked at me with a smile on his face and said "Well then... what do you want to do.?" Without even having to think about it I knew what I was going to say. "I want be the Karen Roof of Fort Mill!"

Now for those of you from my area better know Karen Roof. If you do not, you are missing out. Ms. Roof was my mentor when I did my student teaching. She has also been the mentor to many other teachers spread around the nation who graduated from the Physical Education Department at Winthrop University. Ms. Roof, from my knowledge, has taken a student teacher every year for at least the last 10 years. Some years she takes one or two, but I know for a fact that she has had at least four in one year (a half semester at a time).

While I have picked up many teaching techniques along the way, I would say that the majority of my teaching style comes from Karen Roof. Why you ask? It is not because she is a good teacher or even a great teacher. It is because she is the best Elementary PE Teacher I have ever met, seen, or heard, about. She has been named teacher of the year at least 6 or 7 times at several different schools.  The kids love her, yet they know there are expectations and consequences. She is all over the place helping out where ever she is needed. She is loved by her colleagues and she is a great mentor to all up and coming teachers. That's right I said teachers not just P.E. teachers. She also teaches a class at Winthrop for Elementary Education students on how to incorporate movement in their classrooms.

Now then. Will I ever live up to being the Karen Roof of Fort Mill. I do not know? She has some big shoes to fill, but I will retire trying to live up to the standards and expectations she has set for all P.E. teachers across the country.  So why do I teach the way I do and love my job so much? I owe 99% of it to my role model, mentor, colleague, and friend Karen Roof. Without her and of course my great education from one of the top education schools in the nation, (Winthrop University) I would just be your average Joe P.E. Teacher.

Do you have someone who you look up to and that has inspired you to get to where you are today?