Yee haaa! Western theme Lab at St. Mary's

We participated in our lab three at St. Mary's this past week. This week we had a western theme that went very well. The lab started off great with the students really getting involved in the theme and the Cortland students costumes. Everyone did a great job this week with dressing up. There was almost an 100% rate of Cortland students that dressed up this week for the lab. This is very important to get the students involved in the activities that they are about to participate in. Especially for the younger students in Pre-K and Kindergarten. Dressing up only gets the students more involved in the activities to come.
I would have to say that today's lab was a great success. I started off in the cafeteria with my lab group working with grades 2-5. I noticed that this week the students were much more willing to engage in conversation with the Cortland students. The St. Mary's students are much more comfortable and didn't hesitate to ask a Cortland student to do an activity with them. I was playing lego's with a few young boys. The boys that i worked with while playing lego's were a little hyper and not exactly following directions. I needed to point out some rules and manors for the couple students but after stating them the students were very understanding and followed directions. I think that this is a good step in the right direction with connecting with the students.
Eventually we moved up to the gym where it was our turn to set up activities for the students. The students were very excited to play the activities. But it seemed that there were a few students that just wanted to play basketball or other activities than the ones we had planned. It was a little difficult at first to get all the students rounded up when we got them in the gym. But after a few minutes of setting up we got the students attention and started the activities. One difficulty we had was with the students attention at first. I feel that this was more difficult because we needed to set up or activities which took a few minutes to do. It would have been easier if we already had the activities set up but because we were in the cafe, we were not able to do so. Once we got into the activities i feel the students really were having fun. The students really responded to Rob's activity with the poly spots. The students were very interested in finding what poly spots had the treasure underneath it. I thought that Brittney did a great job with connecting with the students and getting their attention. She got down at the students level and the students really appreciated that. You could tell because they were very interested in her activity, all of the students were sitting quietly and waiting for her instructions. When it came to my activity i was very pleased with the students attention. There were a few outburst from the students but when it came time for me to check for understanding the students responded quickly and correctly. Overall i was very pleased with lab three at St. Mary's. The students really enjoyed the activities that they participated in. I was very pleased with the fact that when it came time for free time the student's didn't just flock to playing basketball. We were able to get the students to play other games such as four-square as i did with a couple students. I was very pleased with this because it gave a chance to connect with the students. It let me know that the students trusted our knowledge of the activity and were willing to try different things than what they normally do.

Physical Activity and Fitness Enhancement Presentation

To help learn the material better for future use and knowledge our class was split up into our lab groups and designated a chapter to present to the class. This presentation not only helped myself learn the information better but it also is a tool for the rest of the class to use.

St Mary's Lab 2

We recently had our second lab at St. Mary's school. I feel that this lab went very well. You could see the increased amount of confidence in the Cortland students from already be their once and getting to know the surroundings as well as some of the children better. The St. Mary's students were very excited for us to be there, especially when they noticed the good group of Cortland students that dressed up for the Cartoon theme. The Cortland students that dressed up immediately had a great connection with the students. They were asking about our costumes and the brought a bond and a way to connect with the students as well. It was very noisy in the gymnasium today, their was a lot of energy being released by all of the students. This increased the challenge of having the students participate in the activity's safely. It was very important during this lab to get the students settled down, quickly give instructions, check for understanding and get the students moving. If you had them sit down for too long you were going to lose them because of the amount of energy they had. While working with the older students i noticed their attention spands today were even shorter than i thought they would be. Each game you introduced you needed to add a flare to it or else the students didn't want to play it and thought it was boring. But once you got the game started the student were having a lot of fun and getting a good work out in through the activity. During the beginning of lab today we were able to assess a couple of St. Mary's students on a few of their Loco-motor skills. The student assessment went well and was a great start to the day. From the beginning with student assessments to the end where we were able to get the older students to participate in an large game of ultimate Frisbee instead of playing basketball; i'd say the whole day was a great success and am very happy with the days outcome.