Lets keep it moving!

Cortland doing it's part to Keep the movement going!

All good things must come to an end, Good-bye St. Mary's!

Our Final day at St. Mary's has come, and needless to say the time has flown by. I can honestly say that working with the St. Mary's students has been a great experience and one that I will miss dearly. To start off our final day at St. Mary's we didn't have any skill assessments. So all our the Cortland groups went with the students right away. My group once again was with the Pre-K students. Our theme for this week was Star Wars so to start off our day with the Pre-K students we did a craft where students made Yoda on a stick. When we entered the room the students were all involved in their own activities; Lego's, coloring, and other toys. We asked the students if they would like to participate in the craft. We only had a few students say yes at first. This quickly made me realize that we never should have asked the students if they wanted to do the craft but rather state that we are going to do a craft now. Quite quickly the other students got into the craft and before we knew it everyone wanted to make Yoda. The only problem was that we lost track on who had already made a Yoda because the number of students, so there were several students that made more than one Yoda. This caused problems towards the end when there was a few students that had not made a Yoda yet. We need to borrow some supplies from the other classroom, thankfully that still had supplies left, and in the end every student was able to make a Yoda. This brought to our attention that in the future we need to pay attention to the number of students making a craft and making sure that everyone had made one before there are multiples made by other students. Because our craft was so long we didn't get to read a book to the students although I was able to read to a few students while Brittney was finishing up the craft with a few students. Eventually we moved into the gymnasium where we switched and from Pre-K to special projects but because there was nothing to do we helped out with the Pre-K students in playing parachute activities. The Pre-K were not very good at listening during these activities. Thankfully the group was smaller because the Cortland Students had a difficult time keeping them under control with these activities. The students kept wanting to walk on the parachute as well as go underneath during every game. There were several attempts to get the students to follow directions and not go under the parachute for example during one activity students were suppose to around the parachute in a circle. Cortland students including myself would run around showing the students what the proper thing to do was. This technique of demonstration helped a little bit and got most of the students running around the parachute but there were still a few students that were not listening to directions. The special projects group led the whole group after the games into a song and dance. This involved Beyonce's new song, Lets move it. They had created a dance to the song which I feel was very successful and went very well. It was very impressive to come up with the dance so quickly to the song and the whole group of St. Mary's students seemed to enjoy it. Now St. Mary's is over and I'm exactly sure what to do with my Monday's. I do know that I have learned a lot with working with the St. Mary's students. I would like to say thank you to all of the St. Mary's students and staff for the experience to work as future physical educator and improve my teaching style as a teacher. My teacher style was definitely changed and formed with my experience at St. Mary's; there is no doubt that my teaching ability has grew greatly with this experience!

Here are a few moments of myself in motion. During the presentation you will see my Most positive and worst moments of motion. Being state champions of NYS was my most positive moment in motion. This was my final year of playing club soccer and we were able to take home the state title. You will see what emotions came to me as I became state champs. On the other hand you will see one of my worst moments in motion. I was playing my high school rivals in soccer. Our school had not beaten them in over 15 years. This was the year or so everyone thought. I was defending their number one striker and had him on lock all game long. It wasn't till 15 minutes left in the game where I slipped up and the striker scored. I immediately felt the pressure and weight of my team being that I was captain and my senior year. You will learn more about how I felt. With this presentation I hope you learn how students can be affected by both positive and negative moments and motion, I know i have and plan on using this information and my own experience to better the experience of future students and children.

Moments in Motion on Prezi

Happy Easter St. Mary's!

For our fifth lab at St. Mary's we had an Easter theme. Easter was the previous Sunday, the day before our lab on Monday. The students at St. Mary's were very excited to tell us about their Easter Sunday's and how they went. All of the students seemed to have a great Easter and loved the fact that they got to eat candy. You could tell they had plenty from all their energy at lab on Monday. Before we went into our groups we observed two students perform the dribbling and kicking skills. We assessed these students with a rubric from our motor development class. Both a female student and male student were being assessed by the Cortland students during the activity. Erica and Jason the two students being assessed were both able to complete and perform the required skills. The only difference between the two students was the ability to perform the skill correctly with the right cues. Jason was able to perform the dribbling of a basketball skill better in terms of following the cues compared to Erica. Her ability to do the proper cues while dribbling needed a little help and technique. Once she was properly shown she was able to perform the skill better but still needed more practice time to better her performance. When it came to the kicking of a ball Erica had great form and technique. Her ability to kick the ball correctly with all the cues was outstanding. Every kick she took had all the necessary cues that are needed to properly kick a ball. Jason was very impressive as well, the only improvement Jason needed to do was working on his follow through as well as inclining his trunk backward during contact of the ball. Both students did a great job with the skill assessment today all around. After the skill assessment we went into our groups. My group was working with the pre-k today. This was my first time working with the pre-k students, needless to say i was pretty excited. Our group split up and Brittney and I went into one classroom while Rob and Austin went into the other classroom. Brittney had planned a great craft for them. The craft was a brown paper bag easter bunny. This involved coloring the easter bunny, gluing him to the paper bag and putting cotton on the Easter bunny. The students loved the craft. Right away we had students wanting to participate in the craft just by showing them a finished project and very quickly we got more and more students participating in the craft. Because we had the whole class doing the craft, it too a little longer and before we knew it, it was time for snack for the kids so we all helped clean up including the students, they went and washed their hands and came back for snack. We still had a few minutes left once the kids had the snack so I was able to read the students a book which I feel the students enjoyed very much. Now onto the gymnasium where the physical activity begins. We started our group out with a game by Rob. I thought Rob did a phenomenal job this week with getting the students enthusiastic about the game and ready to play. You could tell that Rob had all of their attention and the students were all wanting to play his game. The next activity we played was mine. I had a little more trouble getting the students to listen to me at first. The students were still following Rob instead of listening to me. Once i got the students settled down and sitting in front of i was able to quickly explain what we would be doing and started the game right away. My game used more cognitive domain aspect as the students need to match up the same color eggs as well as the same sizes before doing a locomotor movement back to their bunny holes. Overall i feel that my activity went well. This week's lab I would have to say was one of the best one's so far. There was so much enthusiasm and energy from all of the Cortland students which in return had the St. Mary's students very enthusiastic about the activities. I didn't see every group but the ones I did see, I have to applaud everyone and say Great Job!

St. Mary's Lab 4

I was not able to attend the assigned date for Lab 4 at St. Mary's but i made up this lab by going to another lab date. I am part of the Monday lab group but for my make up lab i attended the Wednesday lab. This was a very good experience for me. It was a chance for me to be able to observe different groups in my class and learn from their experiences as well. The lab that i attended was during the Easter theme. I had participated in the Easter theme lab two days prior with my normal lab group and had a great experience. My experience on Wednesday was just as important for my learning experience. To start off i want to talk about the motor development skill i observed while at the lab. I observed two students, a male and a female perform the overhand throw and catch. Both students were able to perform both skills quite well. The young girl was a little more skilled on performed the overhand throw and catch with the proper cues. I feel this might have been because the young girl was listening to our instructions and following them correctly. She was having a controlled through to her partner but the young boy on the other hand was just throwing the ball as high and hard as he could. This caused problems on his control as well as using the proper cues during the skills. Next onto the rest of the lab. Because I was part of the special project group during the lab date I was not able to attend i joined in with the special project group on this day as well. We were to clean all the closets were the equipment went which didn't take very long at all. Once the closets were clean we joined in with other activities and helped out where we could. In my opinion I wasn't very impressed with the amount of participation and interaction between the students and the Cortland students. I felt that there were a lot of Cortland students that were just standing around and trying to pass the time. I feel that is the completely wrong thing to do. We as Cortland students have been given a great opportunity to participate and learn first hand with students, and it just seemed like there were several Cortland students that didn't want to be there. As a future physical educator you should enjoy every moment with the St. Mary's students, which I feel I do. So compared to my regular lab day on Monday I was surprised with the amount of effort from Wednesdays lab groups. Not to say that no one was participating, because there were plenty of Cortland students that were. I just feel that there were many Cortland students that were wasting their experience with the St. Mary's students. This was a good experience for me because I feel that in my Monday lab, there is 100% enthusiasm and participation by the Cortland students and that is the kind of attitude and activity that will not only help the St. Mary's students but get them motivated for activity.

Shiminey Crickets rockin' the mic!

My lab group for motor development made a video for one of the chapters in our book for the class. Our chapter was on Rudimentary manipulative abilities. Watch this video to learn plenty of information on development of movement in children and to get a good laugh. Hope you enjoy the video as much as our group did to make it!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Here's a little bit of my experience with the student's at St. Mary's school. You can see the collage of my experience or watch my video of my experiences through and with physical activity!