Connor Leonard

EDU 470

Dr. Pratt

9/15/2022

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy involves helping all of my students succeed while truly enjoying

physical education and physical activity to stay healthy throughout their life. I believe students

should enjoy being physically active so they can benefit better later in their life. These benefits

include knowing basic ways to stay active if they don’t truly enjoy playing sports or more

vigorous ways to stay active. Teaching the students, the importance of physical activity and the

health benefits will keep them interested in learning.

Students will learn the five National Standards for K-12 Physical Education. In

Elementary the students will learn the basic movement skills needed to move onto middle

school. These skills include locomotor, manipulative skills, and stability. Locomotor skills are

running, skipping, hopping, jumping, etc. these skills are needed in order for the students to play

with friends, be active, and later on do different activities. Manipulative skills are throwing,

catching, kicking, striking, and dribbling, etc. these skills are needed to play sports or be active

with friends. Stability is balancing dynamically and statically. Middle school will be team sports

and invasion style games. These games promote social interaction and teamwork with other

students. These games include basketball, soccer, ultimate frisbee, etc. In high school, students

learn lifetime activities, such as weightlifting, tennis, pickleball, bowling, archery, etc. These

skills are especially important to allow the students to stay active later in their life if they never
enjoyed physical activity before. Students will learn the psychomotor domain through

performing activities. The cognitive domain from quizzes and follow up tests. The affective

domain by their attitudes when working with peers or alone.

My favorite quote from a teacher I have observed was “Students don’t care what you

know, until they know that you care.” This quote really stuck with me because being a teacher

who doesn’t care about their students and rolls the ball out, won’t get the students to respect or

like you. The teacher who shows they care for their students and wants them to succeed with

build a good rapport with them and they’ll want to participate and listen to what I have to say.

When teaching a skill that students might have never tried before, by allowing them to go at their

own pace allows them to feel more comfortable to participate and succeed.

I believe the best way to assess students is having the students access themselves and

peers while I also access at the same time. Giving the students a rubric of the marks that they

should be hitting and having them check off if they do it or not while I also check off the rubric

for each student. By having the students grade each other, this allows me to not get to every

student if time doesn’t allow for that. Also, I’ll pair up the students because friends will just give

their friends a good grade even if they don’t deserve it.

When doing lessons with my students, getting the correct equipment is key. I will get

different sized and weighted balls for students who struggle. For students who have a disability

such as being blind, having a ball that beeps or tapping the backboard on the basketball hoop, so

they know where to go. Keeping the students safe and telling them the safety considerations is

important to make sure no one gets hurt during the activity.

Afterall, teaching the students activities and ways to stay active throughout their life is

very important. Making sure to keep the area safe and keeping the students engaged by making
sure they feel included with the tasks is needed. Also, teaching the students the correct type of

skills that they should be learning at each age is key to making sure the students develop

correctly.