New Team to the NFL!

Roger Goodell has officially had it with the Detroit Lions and want to create a new team to replace them. It is my job along with the rest of my group to run some tryouts for students to try and make the new team! That was the story we used today in our Skill Acquisition Concepts of Team Sports class. We were assigned to give a flag football lesson that lasted 15 min to a class of about 15 students. My good friend and fellow classmate Jack Murphy had a very creative idea of making this lesson into "tryouts" for a professional team. I really like the idea of using stories behind your lessons because it really grabs the students attention. The best way to make the students want to be involved in the lesson is to relate the lesson to them. Knowing that the majority of the class likes the NFL, we used that as the basis of our lesson so we could get students interested. AND IT WORKED!! No surprise there!!

My group and I taught the class the basic cues for a pass, and an upper and lower catch. We kept the cues simple and easy to remember to avoid any confusion between students. We started our lesson off with a fun and exciting game of "Ultimate Football". This is generally the same game as "Ultimate Frisbee" but played with a football. Although it does not guarantee the students will be using the proper form for throwing, it really helps them practice catching from different levels. This game also just gets the students moving and warmed up for the following activity.

Our group then started the class off with a simple activity to practice the basic cues and steps for a pass, and a lower and upper pass. Students got with a partner and stood about 25 feet apart and simply had a catch with each other, tossing the ball back and forth. Since this activity is kind of boring and not much activity is involved, we only let it go on for a few minutes just to get the idea of the movements presented. The next activity we introduced is a form of intra-task variation of the first activity. We played a little "monkey in the middle". This is really the same game except there is one defender in between the partners trying to take the ball away. This provides more of a challenge for the students who are finding the skill to be to easy. Another variation that we applied is having the students running routes. This activity would be considered a game like situation drill, and is very useful when your final goal is to get the kids to play in a full game.

Last but not least, our final drill was a modified game. We split the class into 4 teams and assigned different teams to play each other in a small 5v5 football game. Students wore flags so there was no contact. We made sure to emphasize this in our directions so that no one got hurt. Overall, our lesson went great and the class had a lot of fun doing it. We also have found a couple of potential players for Roger's team. I'll have to call up Roger and let him know. Maybe the NFL will be introducing the Cortland Red Dragons team in the near future. Disney World here I come!!

Teaching on Ice - Broomball - Lab C(international)

255 is moving along and it seems like I was just teaching a simple set in volleyball with no previous preparation. Now I'm in a completely new environment, teaching on ice, explaining a game I have never even played before. On Wednesday, October 28th, 2009, I was assigned Lab C, which was a challenge but a great experience. Myself, along with fellow classmate, Jack Murphy, introduced our class to the game of Broomball. This game was developed in Canada, however, since there is no official history of the sport, we decided to use our creativity to make our own little story. Our little penguin that we created has the name of Dr. Xavier Waddles, and is the famous penguin that invented the game of Broomball. After finding a lot of trash all over Antarctica, Dr. Xavier decided to hit it all around and clean up the mess with a stick he had found. The act of hitting the garbage away gave him the idea of Broomball.

Setting up for this lab was a lot of work and was very stressful. We had to make sure we had the right equipment and the right amount of it too. We also had to make sure that were able to use the ice rink for our lesson and that the ice would be ready for us. This preparation is something that we are going to have to get used to dealing with since when we become teachers we will be doing the same things. I did learn a lot throughout this experience. I now know that when ever you have an assignment or lesson to prepare for, the best thing to do is take care of everything you can as soon as you can. But, after all the fuss was over and I was done stressing over preparation everything, I really gave a good lesson and was satisfied with what I did. This lab involved a lot of work and really tested how well I have come along in my teaching experience. I can see many places where I have improved, and many places where I still need work. One huge improvement that I have almost perfected is being enthusiastic and excited about my lesson. I am moving around, talking loud, and showing my students that I want to be here, and I want to teach this game. This is really important, because once again, if your not having fun, the students won't be having fun. I was able to increase the percent of activity time a little bit from my last lesson, however, I could still slim down on the instruction and add more activity. In my time code analysis form you can see that activity time and instruction time are almost equal. In an ideal lesson the activity time would be above 50% of the lessons total time. This is not a huge deal, and would only take a little bit more planning and practicing for my lesson before. The big reason that I was able to improve my time management was because of the extra practice that I put in to preparing my lesson. I found that if you play out your lesson to your self and actually say what you plan to say, you could manage how long certain parts of the lesson should be. I repeated what I planned to say many times in front of the mirror in my room and not only did it help me with time management, but also with my comfortability in front of the class which I believe is my strongest point.

In my lesson I noticed that I was much more bubbly and active. I moved around and used a lot of hand signals when I was speaking. This is good because it really grabs the students attention. It shows how interested in the lesson I am, and how much fun I am having. If you give off fun, you will get fun back. That is what I believe and it has worked for me great so far.

Another good point that I had in this lesson is the amount of feedback I gave to the students. It is important to give some form of feedback to at least 50% of the class. As it shows in my feedback analysis form I gave the right amount of feedback. I made sure to give both general feedback and skill related feedback. I told the students when they were doing things right and I told them when they were doing the skill wrong. This helps everyone learn because if you only told the students when they did something wrong, they would never know when they were doing it right.

Overall my lesson was a big step up from my previous teaching experiences. There were many things that I improved upon and did right. However, along with everything I did right, there is still, and always be, room for improvement.

In case anyone missed my files here they are:

- Time coding analysis form
- Feedback analysis form
- Lesson plan
- Activity Progression