Bri Lab D Gaelic Football

What?
When I found out that my group was teaching Gaelic football I was excited, because the game looked very interesting and seemed like it would be easier to teach than the rest of the games.  In my stats class with Dr. Foley we talked a little bit about Gaelic football, so I knew very little about it from that class.  After watching the game on youtube and researching the rules and how to play the game I was excited to teach, yet nervous since I have never played before.  I was assigned 9th grade part of the lesson.  9th grade being the beginning of the lesson, I was to teach the basics of the game which included passing.  10th grade was then shooting, 11th was soloing and mini game play, and 12th was 6v6 game play.  For our research packet, at first we were all so nervous because of how long the packet was and how much work had to be done especially on a game that most of us never heard of.  We split up the packet by each of us doing our own lesson plans, and then each had different responsibilities to do for the rest of the packet, and at the end we put together our final lesson plan.  Before we taught we revised our lesson plan so that it had more game play in it, instead of the students just doing drills, and then added full game play at the very end.

Gut
While teaching at first I felt a bit nervous, but not as nervous as my previous labs because I was not leading the whole lesson by myself.  Having Katie, Andrew, and Anthony with me made me feel more confident.  Since I taught 9th grade, I felt like my portion of the lesson was a bit boring for the students because it was so basic, so I believe that I could have changed some things to make it more interesting and still allow the students to learn some things.  Gaelic football, has a lot of rules therefore I knew that we had to make sure that all of the rules were explained well so the students understood how to play.  Since there were many rules that made me feel overwhelmed at first with everything that I needed to know, and then be able to explain it to my students.  Even though this was our last lab to teach, I felt like I still need to explains things more clearly in order for my students to understand what is expected of them.  

Here I am with Mr. Billups, explaining to students where Gaelic football originated

So What?
I think my portion of the lesson went well, but could have been better.  I was in charge of the instant activity, and the first activity.  For the instant activity I believe that I explained the directions well and students knew what they were to do.  After the instant activity, I brought the students in and introduced myself and explained what we were doing for the next activity, I also gave them the word of the day which was RESPECT, they were to respect themselves, others, and equipment.   My the first activity, they learned how to do the underhand strike pass and incorporated it into a game of keep away.  After I explained the activity I sent the students off to their groups, but before doing so I should have mentioned safety, so I had to blow my whistle to get their attention and then mention safety expectations to them.   One thing I definitely need to improve on when I teach is giving the students better feedback.  During the lesson students pretty much got the hang of how to hit the ball, therefore it was a bit difficult to give them feedback since they were hitting all of the cues correctly.  In order to provide feedback I could have made the task more challenging.  The feedback I did give to students had to do with them not using the correct pass that they were taught and instead just throwing the ball to their teammates, or they would be running with the ball when they were not instructed to.

Here I am demonstrating the underhand strike pass first without the ball, to show the correct technique 

Now What?
For the future, I think that should work on giving more feedback.  Another thing that I should work on is being more clear with my directions with students.  One way that I can improve on these areas is by practicing what I am going to say before I teach, and rehearse the lesson.  My group did go into the gym the day before the lesson to plan things out, but next time I think I should rehearse my portion of the lesson more.  I also need to think of more ways to challenge my students, during my lesson I believe that students were not being challenged enough and I should have changed up the activity to give them more of a challenge.  Overall, I think that I did a good job teaching, just need to fix some things up.

Lab A-D
At first, when I did lab A I was very, very nervous.  Lab B I felt more confident but still was nervous especially since it was longer than lab A.  Then when I got to Lab C, and I was teaching the whole class by myself I was also nervous.  Then when I got to lab D yes I was nervous but felt better that I had my peers with me teaching.  After teaching each lab I learned many things from each one, what I needed to work on and what I did well with. It being the end of the semester, I have learned a lot from this class and will continue to learn from my mistakes and what I did well while teaching.  After learning all of these things, I will not look at a phys ed class the same way again.  I also am a recreational gymnastics coach, and after learning different techniques from this class I will use them with my gymnasts.  Overall, I believed I learned a lot from this class and have improved from the start of the semester with my teaching.