MD Lab 2

Well, last Tuesday I went to the Dryden Elementary school for the second field experience. I was less apprehensive about it, which is encouraging for me since I tend to be someone who lets my nerves get the best of me. This experience seemed so different from the first. One major difference was that me and my lab group faced the obstacle of only having one child for the first hour and a half. Although one may think that this could only simplify things but on the contrary, it most certainly did not. Most of the activities that we had planned needed more than one participant. This caused a bit of a breakdown in the structure for the day. Additionally, the intent of the lab was to assess catching and jumping abilities. The one child that we had was only five and therefore had little opportunities to develop his jumping skills. He did however do very well with the throwing and catching activities that we had planned. It appeared as though he had previous exposure to throwing. He continually impressed me with throwing and oppositional stepping. Furthermore, he stepped in opposition almost every time and with various different throwing objects. This lab showed me how important it is to give cue to students that are learning new skills. I worked a little bit with this child to teach him basic locomotor movements in preparation for a game of Magician Tag. He was able to get the basics of skipping. We did it side by side while at the same time giving him exact verbal cues. This approach seemed to be pretty effective. I'm not saying that he could repeat a skip but he did successfully execute a few skips in secession at the time. I was please and it was neat to see the look of surprise on his face as he realized he was able to do it also. Essentially as a PE teacher you need to work to bring out the abilities that people don't think or realize that they have.