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!

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.