Assignment 3A

Introduction

For assignment 3A I chose to teach day one, Monday, of my five day teaching plan. In my teaching plan, week three revolves around learning to set and pass the volleyball; the prior week would have focused on bumping and passing the volleyball. Monday of my five day teaching plan focuses on a review of bumping to start the class followed by an introduction on how to set a volleyball. The group that I used for the assignment was a group of high school football players that are on the team that I coach.

 

My Lesson

To start the class I took the group of students into the gym where the class would normally be held. I started by acting like the bell rang and having them come in and head to the locker room; here we fast forwarded because they didn't need to change. After this they sat in alphabetical order on the bench while I simulated to take roll and interact with the students. Following the completion of roll I then collected the class attention so that I could explain the lesson for the day and what expectations for the class were. Here I began by discussing what had been covered in the past week through group discussion. Once the students minds had been refreshed with prior material I decided that it was time to introduce the "set." First, in order to get a gauge of where the students were, knowledge wise, I decided to give a short answer pre-assessment. The assessment covered the topic of the volleyball set and how to pass and receive. Once the assessments were completed and collected, I then split the class into groups so that I could then demonstrate the proper technique to setting a volleyball. My reasoning behind splitting the groups up prior to the demonstration was so that the groups could go straight into practicing and not be shown something only to forget it while waiting to splits the groups; I just feel like this flows better. Once the demonstration was over the students then had three activities that they would be participating in for 10 minutes each. The activities, which were called Lightning, Bump Count, and Set Count, were all based off the idea of getting the students moving while making sure that they gained knowledge on how to set a volleyball. While the students participated in the activities I walked around making sure to guide the students in the right direction and while doing this I also pulled aside individual groups to assess their knowledge of the game of volleyball and the skill of setting.  I like to do this in groups because of the sizes of most physical education classes; it can be difficult to have a discussion with 50 other students and it is much easier to discuss with 5-8 students.  From here the students completed their activities and rotated every 10 minutes off of my call.  Following the activities I gathered all of the students by having them sit back on the bench so that we could close the class out for the day.  Here I repeated the main points from the day and allowed the student’s to share anything that they felt was important and that was the end of the day.

 

*** I would have had the students warm up following roll but do to it not being a real P.E. class I left that portion out.

 

Reflection

            When reflecting on the lesson after actually instructing it, I can say that it does have enough planning in order to fill up the class period and to defeat lag time.  The whole time during my instruction each little area piggy backed off the other where there was nice transitions.  I would say that one thing that helped me out a lot was having lesson planned this prior to instruction and not just making it up on the fly.  Creating a plan and being able to visualize it before actually instructing it I feel is a major benefiting factor to teaching and I would say that most great teachers probably do this. 

 

One thing that I would change about the instruction was the order which I gave the pre-assessment.  I gave it to the students when they came back from getting dressed and what I should have done was have them come into class and take it before getting dressed.  This would have worked a lot smoother because then when they went to change I would have had to skim through some of the answers. 

 

Something that I enjoyed during this experience was putting the plan to action.  This is probably because I am a coach and like to see the preparation turn into real life.  The students also make it great.  Being able to see the so called “light bulbs” turn on is a great feeling.  Overall it was a great experience.

Assignment 2B - Field Experience

To begin, the group that I used was high school student’s grades 9-12 that I was able to gather during a class that I was subbing. The students were more than willing to help (probably because they thought they were going to get extra credit or something). The group consisted of eight students (5 boys, 3 girls).

The pre-assessment that I chose to give was a short 10 question quiz about the game of volleyball followed by a short discussion; this quiz would be one that was given on the first day of a new unit. I started by explaining to the students what they would be doing and why they were taking the quiz. They all listened and none of them had any questions. I passed out the quiz to the student and told them that they were to work individually on it because it was to gauge where the knowledge of volleyball was among them. The quiz consisted of questions like "what is a bump?" and "how many times can the volleyball be hit on each side?" etc., nothing too difficult. Once the students were done with the quiz we talked about if any of them had played volleyball before and I asked them questions similar to the quiz. I did this so that I could get a feel for where the student understood the game of volleyball, because sometimes a written test doesn't always show everything. Once we were done with the discussion I dismissed the students and thanked them for their participation.

What I found was that the students understood more than what the written quiz showed. During the discussion portion of the pre-assessment I got a better grasp on what the students understood because they explained more into detail. On the written test students where very short with their answers and some didn't know certain volleyball terminology, where during the discussion they did based on what other students said or demonstrated.

What I concluded from this is that some students do not always do well on written tests but might still know the information. When looking at what I could change I actually wouldn't change anything because the two ways I gave the test should be able to cover almost all the students and their different learning techniques. One thing that I would do in a class of 40 students though would be to give the written quiz and then instead of talking to the whole class during the discussion, I would pull aside smaller groups of students to have a discussion about volleyball and see what they know.

Introduction

Hello Everybody,

My name is Ryan Acevedo and I am from Caruthers, California which is just South of Fresno. This is my tenth class at National University as I am working towards my single subject credential in physical education.

Currently I work at Caruthers High School, which is also my alma mater, where I am an everyday substitute and coach. In the short time that I have been working in education I have had two long term stints, one in physical education (4 months) and one is special education (1 month), so I have gained a lot of experience having to be a real teacher. During these stints I went through grading periods and having to lesson plan for the class activities. At the high school I am the head JV football coach and also a varsity baseball assistant.           

Before National University I attended and played college baseball at Fresno Pacific University. I graduated with a B.A. in Kinesiology-Exercise Science in 2011. Honestly athletics are my passion and they are what got me into educational system. After college baseball and a short stint in independent pro baseball were over, I decided to give back and head into the coaching world, which lead to my interest in teaching and my current job. I love the fact that as an educator we have the chance to influence lives and shape today’s youth into contributing members of society.

According to the personality test my closest personality type is ENFP and a close second was ENTP. It also stated that my leadership style revolves around being a change oriented leader. I can see this leadership style in my teaching and coaching style because I am not one to get set in my ways with blinders on. I like to keep my mind wide open and always accept new ideas to make myself better and/or improve. I feel that many times in education that teachers sometimes get stuck in doing the same thing year in and year out never progressing in their techniques. The way I look at it is that if you stick to the same routine that usually you become outdated and therefore passed up. I feel that being a teacher you must reevaluate every year and build upon your personal techniques with new information so that you are continuously ahead of the pack and providing the students the best learning experience possible.