Tyler Bates

10-3-14
Tiger Pride
DT: Systematic Observation
This weeks lesson in Tiger Pride focused on spatial awareness. The students are to be
able to be in activity with one another while still paying attention to what type of space they are
in. There are two types of space that they had learned, the first is general space and the other is
personal space. These tasks that were given to them were to help make it clear what the
difference was between the two types of spaces, while relating them to activities where they
would need to be in both of these spaces. I am teaching 3
rd
grade and I still have roughly 30
students in the class, though some of them may not always show up. The skills that were
previously learned before this weeks lesson plan were cooperative learning and how to work as
a team. The area space that was used was the blacktop. The equipment of this week consisted of
cones, gator balls, scarves, pennies and hula hoops.
On Monday, the student learning outcomes (SLOs) consisted of being able to
demonstrate chasing, fleeing dodging movements across all activities (psychomotor), identifying
strategies on how to flee from/dodge a chaser as well as develop strategies to chasing and
tagging one another (cognitive), and to gain confidence when being in in situations where they
may need to chase, flee, or dodge while smiling and making sure to high five teammate and
being encouraging (affective). For the health related objective, they were to warm up in activity
while increasing their heart rate and warming up their muscles. I would like to say that I met the
objectives for Mondays lesson, because of how most of the students were participating in
activities which is shown in Mondays video. Even though the SOs were uploaded to Sakai the
only one that was really helpful (SOFIT) had no data to report which may have been a problem
with the upload. Other than that I had seen most of my students involved in activities throughout
the lesson when looking over my video. I think that one thing I could work on in my lesson plan
would be the transitioning between the activities because on Monday there was a very long time
that it took to switch between lessons. I also think that it would have been great to change it to
only two activities for a longer period than have three activities because I did not get to the final
activity in the lesson and it would require less transition time.
On Wednesday my SLOs were demonstrate or perform movements while in an open
space as well as in a space that is more condensed due to obstacles in the learning atmosphere
(Psychomotor), identify strategies on how move throughout different spacing, both general and
personal (cognitive) and gain confidence while performing movements in general and personal
space and will smile throughout activities and have positive attitudes toward their classmates
(affective). For the health related fitness goal Students will go through an instant activity to
warm up their muscles and increase their heart rate. I think that all of these outcomes were met
again. All of the students participated in the instant activity of mountains and valleys, and got
their heart rates to go up, they played Spaceship Up, Spaceship down and had completed
activities in both general and personal space, the students used different strategies to dodge the
people who tried to tag them, and they all seemed to be confident throughout the activities. If I
could change one thing about the lesson I would want to make sure that I either do hula hoops
last or not at all because the students like to mess around with them and it is hard to grab their
attention. I also need to work on getting them into their instant activity more quickly.
In both Monday and Wednesday I would say that I completed the 3 of the 4 criteria of the
learning experience, because I had at least half of the students in activity when they were in
activity. The students were improving their skills for spatial awareness by constantly being in
activity. I would say that the one criteria that was not met was being able to provide maximum
time for all students because it was taking a long time for the students to listen to my instructions
and so they were not in activity as long as they should have been. I really need to work on
getting the students focused and into activity while minimizing the management and instruction
time. These days were both an improvement from last week, but it is still not where it needs to
be as a goal that I have. All of the students did have an opportunity to practice at higher levels
because I made sure that they were all participating. At times, I was in activity with them to
encourage them to participate but also to let them know it is okay to have fun in activity and it
doesnt need to be boring. To improve on these practice opportunities I think I need to address
the instructions to the students more clearly and make faster demonstrations of what needs to be
done, that way the students have more time to practice and have higher level practicing. I
offered chances for students to improve their skills by providing different activities to the
students in order to practice the same skills of spatial awareness in different settings, but I think I
can provide more extensions to the tasks to make sure the students are progressing in their skills.
In both Monday and Tuesday I felt that I had pretty good teacher movement. Though
they were not recorded in observations I watched both videos and saw that I was moving around
with the students in their activities while I provided both general and specific positive feedback.
I moved around the perimeter at times but I was mostly moving around in the same area as the
students while in activity, the only time I was not moving as much was in instruction and in
management because I was trying to get the students to obey and listen to me. I believe that I
had moved in most or all of the areas provided in the teach space and in activities.
I found that it is really hard to put COTS on spatial awareness, but I gave instructions for
each activity in the lesson and I reinforced what we were doing in activity as needed. I made
the instructions as clear as I could given the circumstances and when it came to demonstrations I
made sure to have a teacher and student demonstration for each activity. All of the students were
in front of me, but not all of them were paying attention to the instructions or demonstrations so I
had to explain the task a few times after the initial time. I had to provide feedback to some of the
students such as Avonte when in activity because he was not practicing appropriately and would
sometimes cheat during some of the activities like in mountains and valleys. Another time I had
to make sure that Juan was not messing around In Spaceship Up, Spaceship Down because he
really liked to mess around with the hila hoops. I felt that I was very encouraging and corrective
in my feedback to my students. I might improve my demonstrations by making sure that
everyone is listening and paying attention so that I will not have to repeat myself. On Monday I
had a little trouble dispersing equipment which made for a longer transition between activities,
which made the children think that they had some extra free time, so I will try to work on that for
this next week. For collecting equipment it seemed to be pretty effective when I asked my
students to help put it all away because it was cleaned up in 30 seconds. I think that I managed
the disruptive students fairly well. For example, Julius was messing around and testing me from
the moment he stepped foot into Tiger Pride. I gave him his strikes and I had warned him but he
only lasted the first few minutes of Tiger Pride and I had to send him out to Ms. Mendez into the
cafeteria because he would not listen to me or follow the directions. I taught with enthusiasm
both Monday and Wednesday and loved to be in activity with the kids. Three goals I have for
next week are to remember the students names, have smoother transitions in my activities and
increase more participation while lessening management time.
One strategy that I could use to improve the weaknesses in my teaching would be to
make sure I speak clearly and make my presence known to the students. I think that the sue and
lack thereof start and stop signals are a big part of what makes instruction and management time
fluctuate depending on how they are used. I also think it would be helpful if I tried to lower my
idiosyncrasies because I know what I am talking about and it makes it sounds like I dont when I
use them. Going into the next week of Tiger Pride, we are going to start on Chasing, Fleeing and
Dodging. The SLOs for this next week are to perform the skills chasing fleeing and dodging, to
become cognizant (more aware) of what movements to make when fleeing or chasing and to
perform these tasks with positive and encouraging attitudes with one another. In order to achieve
this I will provide ample amounts of examples while trying to get them into activity as soon as
possible, and use positive reinforcements to make sure the students are doing the skills correctly
and reciprocate the positive enthusiasm. I wrote this last part in last weeks observation report
but I was supposed to do one for spatial awareness.