RUNNING HEAD: OBSERVATION

Physical Education Observation

Maree C. Lowe
Ivy Tech Community College

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INTASC Standards

Standard #7: Planning for Instruction

The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous
learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, crossdisciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the
community context.

Name of Artifact: Physical Education Observation

Date: 4/15/2016
Course: Education 240
Brief Description: In the following paper, I will be going into thorough detail in regards to an
observation I performed recently at Chapel Glen Elementary School. I will explain what
accommodations were used, how the lesson was taught, what standards were met, discuss any
routines I noticed, safety measures, participation, management skills, assessments, addressing,
strategies used, and comments that were made by the operating teacher.

Rationale: I chose Standard #7 because this assignment the class I observed was a physical
education class in an elementary school. The sole purpose of the lesson that was being presented
the day I observed contained all the learning objectives involved with this standard.

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Physical Education Lesson Observation
Introduction

I currently got the opportunity to visit Chapel Glen Elementary School. Chapel
Glen is a low poverty school in the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township. 100% of
the students receive free breakfast and lunch each day. With past rezoning, the schools student
occupancy decreased within the last year, they are down to about 550 students. The physical
education teacher that is employed at this school has been teaching there for over 20 years. The
students seem to be very comfortable around her and seem to enjoy her company. I got the
impression that the teacher seemed a bit burnt out, not having much patience, but this could have
been due to it being near the end of the school day. From what I heard, students in the class I
observed participating the P.E. room was very high functioning. The teacher stated this was one
of her best, well-behaved classes. There were 23 students in this 3rd grade class.
Classroom Observation Experiences
The gym was fairly large, certainly accommodating to the group of 23 kids. The lesson
involved place value math. When the teacher mentioned this to me, I was a bit flabbergasted,
Math in gym? I thought. The purpose of the activity was to develop loco-motor skills while
reinforcing the math concepts of addition, subtraction, and some multiplication. There were 10
different cones taped with numbers 0-9. The teacher would then call out a loco-motor skill and a
math problem with a two-digit answer. The students would then have to do that motor skill,
while giving the accurate answer to the math problem by going to each of the correct cones. For
example, she told the students to skip while computing the answer to 12+12. The students then
skipped to the cones 2 and 4. A routine was certainly evident as the students entered the gym.
They all has designated spots throughout the marked basketball court. All students immediately

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sat on their spot as the teacher entered to take roll. The teacher addressed what the object of the
game was and also gave examples of proper ways of participating and improper ways of
participating. This allowed for the students to recognize the importance of following directions
so it could possibly prevent any injury or accidents. The teacher seemed very thorough with her
classroom management skills. Students could have easily taken advantage of not following
directions and do the opposite of what she had asked. Whenever a student did not participate
appropriately or meet the teachers expectations, they were immediately addressed with a
warning. If the student continued to not follow directions, disciplinary actions took place. In
gym, if students do not follow directions, they are placed in a time out off to the side where they
have to watch everyone else have an enjoyable, active time. Students who continue to
misbehave, they have to go to one of the other special classes such as Music or Art, and serve a
Level 2. A Level 2 consists of a time out in what is considered a buddy room, then spoken to
about their actions, and usually receives a phone call home to make the parents aware. On this
day in particular, the operating teacher was not taking any sort of assessment. She was just
documenting their participation and providing extra math practice for their math facts. I was
curious and asked the teacher if she did the same thing with all of her classes, but just made the
math problems easier for the lower grades and harder for the older. She did in fact have all of her
classes participate in this activity. There were no special need students in this class, but I did
request to know if the teacher had accommodations for students who might be in other classes
she had because I knew there was a developmental kindergarten class who may not be as
cognitively prepared yet as other classes. She said that in classes that were lower functioning, she
would put colored covered over certain cones. She would then test then direct the students to do
a loco-motor skill while going to a specific colored cone. The teacher provided me with a

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website she has referred to often for lesson plan ideas, PE Central. I found this site to be very
valuable resource to broaden my knowledge of interactive activities. As the class session closed,
the teacher blew her whistle. All the students stopped what they were doing immediately, aside
from a few. They all returned to their designated spots located on various places across the gym
floor until their homeroom teacher arrived to pick them up.
Teacher Comments
Immediately following this class session, it was conveniently the teachers prep. I took
this opportunity to ask more questions regarding the lesson. I was eager to know how she knew
what activity to hold each day and how to accommodate for all grades she would have
throughout the day. She said she would often have the same activities for students of all grades to
do, but just slightly altered to fit their age group appropriately. I also asked her if she sometimes
had different activities for each grade in one day. She said it depended on the time frame that
they had and what the duration of the activity was. Some activities are more popular than
others, so you have be prepared for an alternate route in case one falls through. Luckily for the
operating gym teacher, she has been educating students on physical and health education for
many years. For her sake, she has been able to figure out what works and what doesnt.
Summary
This whole experience was very interesting. I never plan on being a physical education
teacher. I learned through this observation that even though the content is different in this class
compared to an average academic room, they are all tied together in some sort of way. Every
teacher comes up with a lesson plan that meets a standard that needs met in that specific grade. I
really liked that the teacher chose to include mathematics or color differentiation in her lesson,
even if it was a P.E. class. In my own past experiences participating in my specials class, I dont

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recall ever doing anything like that. I feel like it was providing more academic support to the
students allowing them to be more successful. I truly enjoyed this experience and it made me
even more eager to see what interactive activities I want to include in my own classroom in the
future.

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References

Kovar, S.K. (2004). Elementary Classroom Teacher as Movement Educators (4th ed.). Boston:
McGraw-Hill
PE Central. Retrieved April 15, 2016, from http://www.pecentral.org/