Lab B- Brianna Musselman Volleyball

What?  
My topic for lab B was Volleyball.  The first thing that came to my mind was, "This is going to be great." I have played volleyball during physical education class over the years in high school and middle school. Also had it as a unit for Team Sport Methods freshman year, and one of my best friends is a volleyball coach, so I had someone to turn to for some advice in the sport who is more experienced than myself.  I believed that this topic would not be too difficult to teach, since I have more experience with Volleyball compared to my Lab A topic which was inline skating.  I started the class off with an instant activity called, the wave drill.  It kept everyone involved and moving all at once, was simple, and had to do with the sport of volleyball.  Not only did it involve movement, but I also added in communication, when I yelled out "ball is coming" the class was to respond with "got ball".  This was added because it is very important in the sport of volleyball, and got the class to work on their communication skills, which is part of the affective domain.  After the instant activity, we went through the cues of the forearm pass which was our focus of the lesson, then did two other drills to work on the forearm pass.  According to the pre-assessment data, all of the students were either medium or high skilled.  This being said I tried my best to make it challenging, but think I could have done a better job with it, by focusing on a harder skill like the serve or making the task more complex.

Gut
During the day before I had to teach I was feeling pretty confident, and ready to teach.  Then when I got to the gym the nerves hit me, even though I was prepared and knew what I was going to do throughout the lesson.  During the lesson it appeared to me that the students did not seem that excited about the topic and the focus.  Yet they all participated and did well with the skills.  While speaking to the class, I felt more confident than I did during Lab A.  I believe that confidence is key, having confidence will make the lesson and teaching become more natural.  Not having to worry about forgetting what to say, or stuttering my words makes it harder for the class to understand, which can lead to frustration of both myself and the class.  Knowing that I had 15 minutes to teach my lesson, I was afraid that I would run over time, but it ended up that I was short on time.  As the class finished up the second activity, I looked at the timer and I still had a lot of time to teach.  With the time that was left it was too much just to end there with my closing, so I quickly added another activity for my students.  Even though I felt nervous about the time, I gained back my confidence by adding one last activity for my students.  Felt proud of myself that I was able to think of something that was easy to explain, simple, and had everyone involved. After teaching Lab B I felt confident and proud of myself.  I did also feel worried because I believe that the tasks I had my students do were not challenging enough.  Now I know for next time to change things up and offer more of a challenge for my students.

So What?
While the students were performing the drills, I walked around the gym and gave feedback to my students.  After reviewing my video I noticed that while giving feedback to my students, I went right to what they should be doing instead of how to fix their mistakes.  According to the text "Teachers will often couple evaluative and corrective feedback together, such as, 'You really got your feet into position that time; now let's try and follow through on your stroke'. In the first part of the feedback, the teacher was making a judgement about previous performance, and in the second part of the feedback statement, the teacher was giving the student information on how to correct the future performance" (Rink 140).  Comparing my way of giving feedback to what Rink has in the book was different, instead of judging what they did previously I went right to what they should be doing for the future. I need to be more positive first when giving feedback, instead of showing them what they should be doing.  During the first activity, bumping with a partner I noticed that two of the groups were not having much of a challenge with the bump.  So I added in that their partner was to throw the ball away from them so they were to move to the ball to get under it, and they were more challenged.  According to Rink this was an example of "Changing and modifying tasks for individuals and small groups" (144). "Extend the task laterally (another way to practice the same task at the same level of difficulty) for individual students. " (145).  I sort of figured while writing my lesson plan that I would need to make it more challenging to students as they were getting the hang of the drill, especially because volleyball is a very popular sport and most of the students in my class were either high or medium skilled.  I also was looking out for those who were performing as a "low skilled student" because on Monday when I was a student and Hannah was teaching I was told by Dr. B to perform as low skilled so there was variety of skill among the class.  So with that in mind, I made sure I paid close attention to those students who were having difficulty and made changed things up for them to be more successful.  It is important that as a teacher you can accommodate all students, whether they are low medium or high skilled.

Now What?
Now for Lab C I know what I need to change in order to be more successful.  I believe that I can still speak more clearly, and in order to improve on this I must practice it as an everyday thing while talking with my peers.  Also I need to work on my time management, since I had extra time, for my Lab C lesson plan I might have to add in another drill so that I do not have that extra time.  And if I don't have time to do that extra activity at least I will be prepared with something instead of having to come up with an activity in the heat of the moment.  I also should challenge my students more since they all seemed to be doing well with the forearm pass.  Like Dr. B said, we are teaching 12th grade, and I do believe that my lesson was more of a middle school lesson and too basic for high schoolers.  They did not seem that thrilled with what we were doing.  For Lab C I will make sure that there is game play involved and that I make things more interesting and fun!

                       Here I am explaining the cues for the Forearm pass to my students

Watch my Lab B Video by clicking here!