Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Annoying Sibling!

Today in class I taught a quick, exciting Ultimate Frisbee lesson on throwing to a defended catcher. Peers before me had taught other skills leading up to my lesson and on Friday, October 2nd it was my turn! We started out with an introduction to the activity that was similar to a familiar monkey in the middle. Although, we played as if we were all little, annoying siblings! The students focused on the opponent without the Frisbee and were forced to complete passes to defended catchers. In order to successfully complete passes, students had to cut to the Frisbee, use a variety of passes and find their open teammate. Mid way through this activity, I noticed defenders were getting tired and the offense had caught on to quick throws. The rules were then switched to only using their non-dominant hand. This made it more difficult for the passers and the defense's success rate improved.

After reviewing my lesson and receiving feedback from the lab assistants I recognized things I did well along with things I still have to work on. Unlike my previous teaching experiences my voice projection was lacking and I was unable to understand myself. This time around, my audio proved that I had improved in these areas. My voice was easy to understand, full of excitement and engaged my students much more effectively. My transcript was much easier to do and I was able to evaluate myself much better. During the students lesson, I walked around and gave feedback to the students and evaluated their performance. I feared that if I had not restricted the students from using only their dominant hand the defense would have became exhausted and overwhelmed.

I also noticed things I need to work on such as my time management. Although I did score well on the management, waiting and activity time, I had used 44% of my time to instruction. This time could have been used for more activity or even time for a new activity. Another major thing was I had my back to parts of the class a majority of the time while giving feedback. I learned this the hard way when students started joking around and rough housing with each other. I need to remember to keep my back to the wall rather than to the students. While listening to my audio I also noticed I talked extremely fast while giving the initial instructions. I even notived I sounded slightly out of breath and my sentences began running together.

Every teaching experience gives me an opportunity to learn and grow as a teacher. I plan to keep using self, peer and teacher feedback to better myself and make my teaching as effective as possible. This experience helped me gain confidence, knowledge and gain an idea of how to be the best teacher I can be!

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