Joe Palo Lab D

WHAT?
I was excited to find out that my group would be teaching Tchoukball, I played the game before and I really enjoyed it. During my segment of the lesson I taught 12 grade and I was responsible for the game-play aspect of the lesson. I knew that it would be a difficult to work together as a group on an assignment like this but I think that we came together well and made everything work. The first thing we did was break up the responsibilities, Abbie was designated to take care of the passing which would be the instant activity, Mike was assigned the responsibility of shooting, and Dylan took on the variations of the game. We spent a lot of time together making sure that we were all on the same page for the lesson. We needed to make sure that each part of the lesson flowed into the next. We decided that starting off with a three person would be the best as an instant activity because the students would be practicing passing and catching while getting their heart rate up and running down the gym. We put the shooting lesson in next so that the students could get a feel for one of the main skills of the game, they all did very well with this and started to get the hang of the way the ball bounced off the rebound frame. After shooting we moved on to two 3 v.s. 3 games so that the students could get a feel for how the game would actually be played but in a controlled environment. This worked well because there was a lot of open space to move in and it was easy to stop the game and make quick corrections and restart the game right away. Finally we got into the actual game-play, we played one big 6 v.s. 6 game and had everyone participating together. Everyone seemed to understand the rules and played a very competitive game that ended in a tie. The tie game was a great hook for the next lesson to keep the students interested. We finished with a cognitive assessment for the group and showed them their grades when we had class again on 12/2.

GUT.
I felt very confident upon first getting the topic of Tchoukball because I had played the game before and I knew that it was a fast paced and high scoring game. As we progressed through the assignment I became nervous that the lesson may be more difficult than we originally thought. With all the time we put into planning I thought I would have been more confident by the time we had to teach but I was still extremely nervous. As we got started things were running smoothly and I began to become more comfortable with my responsibilities for the lesson. Once my time came to teach I was confident in what I was doing, I brought the group together and split them into teams and reexplained some of the rules just as a reminder. As the game got underway I felt that everything was going well, there were a few adjustments for some students to make so I tried to adjust them on the fly which I realized was not the best way to handle corrections. I should have stopped the game and addressed the corrections that needed to be made and then resumed the game. This was a good lesson to learn for the future when I am teaching.

SO WHAT?
I think that my portion of the lesson went well. I know that I could have been more effective with my feedback throughout the game and that is a good lesson to have learned. I became increasingly more confident about my teaching as the lesson progressed and I think that the students definitely enjoyed the lesson. The fact that the students were talking about the lesson throughout the day after the class had ended told me that we did well, we generated interest and we were able to use that to our advantage to keep their attention throughout the entire lesson. The tie game at the end of the lesson could not have been more perfect in my eyes; all of the students were able to participate fully, demonstrate what they learned, and no one came out on the losing end of the game, I wish I could say that I planned it to be that way because it just fit the theme of our lesson so well.

NOW WHAT?
After teaching this lesson I have found that I need to be more vocal with a large group and willing to stop the activity to make adjustments. I tend to try to make adjustments on the fly so that the activity does not have any interruptions, but a lot of the time the corrections that I am making apply to more than just one student so by stopping the activity and getting the attention of the group I am able to correct many students and prevent some from making the same error.

LAB A-D
I have definitely seen a progression in my teaching from Lab A. When I initially taught Pilates in Lab A I was extremely nervous and I wasn't really confident because the topic was sort of foreign to me, I had never done Pilates before and didn't know much about it. I did some research and I was able to create a pretty good instant activity that incorporated some of the movements one would do in a Pilates class and it went well. I brought in some information that would keep the students interested in continuing with the activity and maybe even try it on their own. In Lab B I was way more confident and comfortable with the topic I was teaching I put together a lesson that covered three different poses and had different ways to make each pose easier or harder and I could tell that the students were challenging themselves as best as they could. This lesson made me comfortable with myself as a teacher because I was able to direct the group and teach to all of the different skill levels. By Lab C I had a very good understanding of how I wanted to teach the class, I modeled the lesson sort of after my Lab B lesson because I thought it was very effective, so I first went over the three poses from the lesson before for the new students that joined the group and then I introduced three new poses. I gave the students each a sheet to assess themselves on how well they were performing each of the poses, this was important because it gave them the cues right in front of them for the entire lesson and they could refer back to it at any time. I think having this tool with them for the whole lesson enhanced their learning because they were able to constantly remind themselves of the correct cues. When I got to Lab D I had to take a few steps back, I was sort of familiar with Tchoukball because I had played it once before, but familiar enough to be able to explain the rules to someone or even jump into a game right away. So this involved some research like Lab A did. I had to get myself comfortable with the game and have an understanding of what I was to be teaching. At this point I feel very confident about my ability to teach a large group, I think I have the tools that are necessary to be effective in enhancing student learning.

 In this picture I am holding up a poster that has the six person roster of Team 1 for our Tchoukball game.

In this picture Katie is making a great jumping catch off the rebound frame during the shooting part of the lesson.