Week # 3

Week 3

This week felt like a big week for me in many aspects. There are three points I want to highlight from this week that were successes in my physical education classes and as well as my sports medicine and medical terminology classes. The first success is the encouraging feedback, I received from my students during the lessons I taught during the week. They all were engaged and answered all the questions I asked them about each lesson. The next feedback, I received was from my cooperating teachers throughout the week. The last was taking over all but one of my classes during the day.

On Wednesday I had to think on the fly and change my lesson plan as the gym we normally in for class was going to be used for another class during a class period. Luckily, the class period before my 4^th hour is my planning period. I had the opportunity to sit down with my cooperating teacher and go over what I wanted to teach. Having this conversation with my cooperating teacher made me feel comfortable going into this new lesson as I only had about 30 minutes to prepare for the lesson.  I was able to go into the fitness center early to make sure I had access to all of the cardio machines and that each one was working properly. The lesson I had planned to teach involved having the students work on their cardio endurance by using the bike, treadmill, and elliptical. I had the students spilt up into three groups in which they would choose one of the cardio machines to start off on. The students were on each machine for 6 minute. The students were on the treadmill, they had to maintain a speed of 6.0 during the time. On the bike, students were asked to maintain an RPM of 80 during the time. The students on the elliptical had to maintain a speed of 7.5 during the 6 minutes. After the minutes were up the group of students rotated to the next machine and repeated the same process on the new cardio machine. ready. Once the class period started I felt more than prepared even though I was a little nervous. Following the period my cooperating teacher informed me that she thought I did a great job running the lesson and involving all students; this gave me confidence moving forward with my lessons. Additionally, my students informed me that they loved the lesson because they were able to try something new and got a good sweat in. 

The next success I had this week was from my cooperating teachers. I try to meet with each of my teachers every day either during my planning/lunch period or after school to discuss how each of my lessons went. This week both of them had positive feedback for me following each day that I taught. One of the discussions we had on my first day of teaching was projecting my voice a bit more while in the gym so that all students can hear me. I was able to use this feedback during the rest of the week which helped improve my delivery. Both of my cooperating teachers had mentioned that they thought I did a great job during my lessons. My 4^th and 5th-hour cooperating teacher made points on how I did a great job on classroom management as PE is larger class size and can be harder to control at times. This was another positive note for me at the end of a good week.

Finally, this was the week where I had taken over almost every class period except for one as my cooperating teacher and I will co-teach as it is a new class this semester. I sat done with both my cooperating teachers last week to discuss if I felt comfortable taking over and I said yes. I felt this will assist me in maintaining success for the rest of my student teaching at this particular placement as it helps me gain a better understanding of the demands early on. This my main cooperating teacher was out of Thursday, so we had a sub. I felt very comfortable and confident continuing to lead the class as I was already doing it for the week. On Friday, my cooperating teacher asked the students how the sub was and they said they didn’t even notice that the sub was there due to me instructing them in earlier lessons. I enjoyed every minute of this week and feel prepared to take over all class periods starting Monday.

Classroom Confidential 

In Chapter 3, Schmidt discussed how teachers may have to act as a ringmaster when teaching. I really liked how Schmidt addresses how teachers work with various students. It is important to understand that every student does not learn the same not only in a general education classroom but in physical education as well. Schmidt highlights identifying the ways each student in your classroom learn or what they find interesting and apply it to your instruction. One thing that caught my attention was students may hide their frustrations by misbehaving. This may be due to the student not understanding the material and acting out because they may be afraid to ask questions.

Schmidt continues on by explaining the ways a teacher can combat these behaviors and assist the students to feel more involved. One solution is to provide the students' choices when completing work. An explain is if a student is struggling with reading comprehension don't make the student answer a whole bunch of questions or write a paper. Instead, have the student make a poster board or draw a picture to show their understanding. A highlight from this chapter was the importance of body language. I try to use this when in physical education because it assists me in determining if my students are enjoying the activity. Additionally, I never thought of considering it from how my students view my body language as a teacher. Showing the students how passionate or energetic you are while teaching a lesson can help with student engagement. 

The topic that stood out to me the most from this chapter was the last page. Schmidt stated all students want to succeed in school and it is up to us as teachers to help get them there. I agree even though a student may struggle all they want to do is succeed in class. It is important that we make the correct accommodations and modifications to ensure their learning is a success. 

Cultivating Academic Language Acquisition

The first pages in this chapter state, when introducing language demands in the classroom environment it is vital for the teacher to check for student comprehension. Thus, while asking important questions, sometimes it can be beneficial for a teacher to say to the students "understand?" at the end of each question. By achieving this, the class can realize if they genuinely understand and ask any questions they may have regarding the topic. Occasionally the classroom discussion can model the language that you are requiring the students to employ and maintain throughout the lesson. By expressing what you are instructing and then having the students complete a sentence about the topic can assist in long term comprehension.  

The next highlight that stood out to me was being able to connect new knowledge to previous knowledge. The first example provided was the use of metaphors in the classroom. For a student, it is vital to have the ability to connect knowledge to other ideas that may not seem to be similar but being able to identify similarities can aid students in connecting the two types of knowledge together. Thus, this allows students to connect academic language/ topics pertaining to the class to another topic that students are familiar with to aid in new knowledge retention.

Lastly, it is significant for teachers to apply academic language to the real world. The article states, in classrooms, uncomfortable topics are passed over due to nature, but the author states it allows for the opportunity of great conversion between the students. Additionally, the article mentions the importance of the usage of language. An example provided is the teacher using the students’ everyday language and showing them how to appropriately use it.