Katie Lupo Gaelic Football Reflection

WHEN:

                The international sport that we had picked was Gaelic Football. I was pretty excited when I picked that topic because it actually looked fun to play and very interesting. Even though I was excited for it I was still kind of nervous because I knew absolutely nothing about it. Having the group that I was put into made me feel a lot better about everything. We all had confidence in each other and we were all there to help whenever we could, which made it so much easier to learn and realize that it wasn’t going to be that bad. During our first meeting with each other we did a bunch of research just on the game, rules, and the history of Gaelic Football. We learned so much about the sport in just that first day. We decided that Bri was going teach 9^th grade where she would talk about mostly passing, I was 10^th grade and I talked about the different shooting techniques, Anthony was 11^th grade and he got into how to solo the ball and mini game play, and Andrew was 12^th grade where he focused mainly on 6V6 game play.   My entire group was frustrated when we heard about the research packet and learning about all the work that had to go into it.  On our first meeting day we decided that we were going to meet as much as possible. We divided the responsibilities up and then we each began working on our own lesson plans. Once we finished those we began working on the rest of the packet. Although the packet was long and at times stressful I’ve learned so much from it and now am so glad that I did it. Before we taught we revised our lesson plan and made a few changes to it and everything ended up working out smoothly.

GUT:

The day before I taught I was feeling more confident than I have been in any of our labs. I felt like I knew exactly what I wanted to teach and exactly how I was going to teach it. Once the time came to teach I was feeling a little nervous but not as nervous as I was for the other labs. Knowing that I wasn’t teaching the whole lesson about a game with so many different skills and rules made me feel so much better. I knew that I had my group there to help me out. There was a point during my lesson where I completely forgot what I was going to say while I was explaining the activity I wanted the students to do and rushed through the explanation and just sent the students on their way.  I turned to Anthony and Andrew and told them I didn’t think I was doing so well, and they both said you’re doing great just relax. With them saying that made me realize that I knew what I wanted to say and that I really did need to relax and stop treating this lesson like I was acting it out. That is the one problem I have when it comes to teaching in front of my peers. I feel like I’m just acting everything else instead of actually being confident in myself. While I was going over the rules of the activity I went over safety which is one of the most important things to go over which was good, but I don’t think I said the directions as clear as I wanted to. That is something that I really need to work on. If I can just relax and have confident while teaching in front of my peers I know I will make a great teacher one day.

SO WHAT:

For my part of the lesson I thought it went alright. Teaching about the shooting techniques in Gaelic Football is a pretty easy topic to teach and understand. I demonstrated the different shots in different angles which was good. I could’ve repeated the cues a few times though. During the activity that I chose to do, I aloud the students to just shoot around to get a feel of the different shots that they were taught to do. They were all pretty good at all of them, some just need to work on control and accuracy.  I made different changes for them like moving closer to the to the goal because some of them were too far away and also changing up the type of ball they were shooting with because some students chose balls that were too light so it was hard for them to have good accuracy. After I let them shoot around I got them into a 2V1 game where they were to pass the ball correctly and find an open shot to shoot the ball using the three different shots that I had taught to them. They all seemed to enjoy the game which was great because you don’t want your students to be bored with a task. Other than explaining what I wanted the students to do better I thought that my lesson went alright but it definitely wasn’t my best.

NOW WHAT:

 Watching my video and looking back on everything there are a few things that I will make sure to improve on. During my intro I need to really make sure that the students have an understanding of the different cues that I taught by asking CFU questions before I let them off to play. While I’m explaining things I need to not rush and actually say everything that I need to say before the students run off. Rushing is one of my biggest flaws, I think it’s because I’m afraid that I will forget to say something so I try to rush to say it all and actually forget to say stuff because I’m going through it too fast. I thought I did okay when it came to feedback since the students were all pretty good at shooting I would like to challenge the students a little more next time. The last thing that I need to remember to do during group teaching is to say a closer I kind of just handed it over to Anthony without going over anything that they had learned which wasn’t what I wanted to do at all.

Me explaining an activity to everyone.

Reflect on your growth from lab A to B to C to D - Talk specifically how you enhanced student learning and what you have learned from the process.

I believe I've grown so much from Lab A to B to C to D. Before doing lab A, I remember be a nervous wreck. I was so nervous to teach for the whole 5 minutes that we had to teach for. I didn't think I did that bad though I thought that my introduction to aerobics was pretty good I remember I said exactly what I wanted to say and did an okay instant activity. I thought that my lab B wasn't that great I was teaching dance aerobics. I started to ask questions to check for their understanding, but I definitely could’ve asked more. I made the tasks way too easy for my group. I didn't really think of ways to make the task harder. I just wasn't as prepared as I shoulder been for lab B but I did learn so much from it. Lab C I thought was my best lab that I did. I taught water aerobics, I had everything all planned out everything I wanted to say and everything that I wanted to ask. It took me hours just to plan the lesson making cue cards and trying to make the lesson as interesting as I could. In my intro I made sure to ask multiple questions just to get the students thinking, I also used many names and made sure to call on many different students. I really wanted the students to have a good bond with me so that they weren't afraid to ask question or even be embarrassed to do different tasks. I thought I was pretty clear with my instructions during Lab C which made everything run smoothly. On the visual aids I gave the students many different options to do and gave them different ways to make a task easier or harder. I made sure to ask as many questions as I could during the lesson. I asked questions like, “How do you think you can make swinging in the water a harder workout” I think asking questions to your students is great because it gets them thinking and makes them interested in the activity. I made sure to challenge everyone that I saw was doing the activity with ease. Over all I thought I learned so much after lab B. Even though I was still a little nervous I was more organized I was confident and I thought I got the students really engaged in water aerobics. Going into Lab D I wasn't as nervous which is good, I thought I was still pretty organized with everything but I felt that I rushed this lab. I did go through the cues and demonstrated what I wanted to demonstrate, I asked a few questions to get the students thinking and they were all pretty successful in shooting at the end of the lesson which was what I wanted to achieve. Overall I've learned so much from this course it was so much work but I’m so glad that we had to do everything that we had to do. I became more confident than I was when I started off, I became more organized with my teaching, and I learned to take a central focus and create a lesson revolving it. In the end I think I've become a better teacher now I just need to work on being confident in what I’m teaching.

Me teaching the strike shot.

WATCH MY VIDEO!