TINIKLING - DAY 2

Time for tinikling again! This time around I focused generally on the free foot in the tinikling dance, which is the foot farthest from the side to start the dance on. If you were on the left of the sticks, your left foot would be free to intiate the first cue of out, then the left foot would be the solid base, and same goes for start on the right foot. Another important thing I emphasized was to always have the hands behind the back and eyes up. While I was demonstrating the free foot, my back was to the class, which was not good at all due to my eyesight was not focused on the class. It is difficult to perform a dance using all the opposite cues instructing to mirror the class, I guess that will simply come with practice. The class broke into groups and practiced being strikers and dancers, and the fun part about this lesson was the MUSIC! They got a feel for the style music that is used for traditional tinikling, but it can be modified towards the hip hop category. My idea is to possibly have the students choose a song to perform a tinikling routine next time!

TINIKLING - Day 1

Well Lab C has begun, everyone is ready with their professional attire and watches on the wrist, and ready to teach international games! Maria and I decided to use Tinikling, an art of dance from the Philippines. It has a very catchy beat to it provided with two bamboo sticks and simple footwork. For my seven minutes of the lesson, I focused on the beat, using the cues "Together, beat beat, 1, beat beat, 2, beat beat, etc". We are not using the sticks yet, but the collective sound of the group by using their hands and kneeling on the floor was very good. It is very similar to our "We will we will TEACH YOU" beat, which I noticed towards the end of the lesson. I then divided the group in half into strikers and dancers, the strikers are responsible for the beat, while the dancers were responsible for the footwork. I placed each group on opposite sides and was able to see if the dancers could keep up with the 10 beats of the strikers. It was difficult at first, but once we had a leader to the beat, it went smoothly. The last part of the lesson I had 2 people from each group (strikers and dancers) team up together and practice. I set each group up the exact way they would look in a Tinikling routine, just without the sticks. Once each group practiced and got a chance to be a striker and a dancer, it was time to wrap things up and keep the anticipation going for next class! Overall, I feel Maria and I did a great job for the first part of this lesson due to we just learned it as well!

Here is an example of Tinikling:

We Will We Will TEACH YOU!

Last Friday, October 10th was the mini conference here at Cortland! It was a very interesting day, but by far the best part was done by Professor Yangs` 255 classes, opening up the day with a fun beat and saying. I somewhat feel responsible for this action for blurting out in class about the beat of Queen - We Will Rock You, simply taking the beat and words and changing them just a tad! After entering the gym with that introduction, I was very excited for the day! It actually was a wake up call a little bit of where I am in my major right now and the importance of a day like the mini conference is. I was there all morning for the opening speech with Dr. Pass and his amazing experience he shared with us. Then I attended a Polar workshop, it was interesting information, yet I felt like I was listening to a car salesman. The presenter was more focused on his product then the information we would obtain from it to make us better teachers. The next session I attended was the Leadership in PE, which was definitely interesting to be sitting in a room with professors, elementary PE teachers, high school PE teachers and fellow classmates. They stressed the importance on making a mark in your school's PE program, because it is not just the high schools fault for bad PE, PE needs to be vital to the students` lives beginning at a very early age. They spoke of possible plans to begin a curriculum at the elementary level that would carry all the way to high school. The presenter brought up the term "UBUNTU", which coincidentally is our key theme to our 2009 Cortland Softball Season. The meaning of this word generally means, "I AM because YOU ARE", it shows the importance of teamwork and how each individual of a team must be all they can be, but that isn't possible unless collectively everyone has the mentality of working together. It is a rare word, but very important and has a lot of meaning to me right now through my dedication to my team, but I can certainly use once in the teaching field. Overall, the mini conference was a great experience and definitely opened my eyes to the future of my PE career!

Frisbee Feedback Analysis

For our ultimate Frisbee unit, I was the first to go! I was a little nervous to start the whole unit, but my lesson was very basic. I taught the backhand throw of a frisbee, I definitely had great cues, but my feedback portion was not good at all. My feedback analysis was very weak and certainly did not meet the requirements to even get half the class. I only gave Chris feedback twice and thats it. I volunteered in the classroom for my teaching recording to be played, it was a tad embarrassing to only have one student down on the sheet for feedback, but I definitely learned from it and realized I was one of the first to go and accepted my mistake. For future lessons, I will certainly provide feedback to more than half the class (if time allows).

Welcome to 255 Olympics -- Teaching with Casey!

Towards the end of September, Casey and I volunteered to teach. We chose a themed event which was the Olympics, due to the Olympics just ending. We had three stations set up -- Scooter Swimming, Double Dutch and the Long Jump. Casey did a great introduction and I did the demonstration part, while then everyone dispersed to each station and switched after 2 minutes. We went around to each station providing feedback to everyone, and all the students seemed to enjoy the activity. I feel Casey and I did a good job working together, but since then we have definitely improved on our skills by using the proper teaching criteria.