St. Mary's Lab 3

The skills that we had the students perform included leaping, horizontal jumping, and sliding. The children that I observed perform these skills were Jim, who was male and a six year old first grader, and Jenn, who was female and a six year old first grader. The first skill that I observed was the leap. Jim performed the leap and met every criteria for it making no mistakes. Jenn was lacking one of the performance criteria for the leap, which was that she didn’t use a forward reach with arm opposite the lead foot. The next skill that I observed was the horizontal jump. Jim had some trouble with meeting the performance criteria, in which he didn’t have his arms extend forcefully forward and upward, reaching full extension above the head. He also didn’t bring his arms downward during landing. Jenn missed one of the performance criteria for the horizontal jump, which was that she didn’t have her arms extend forcefully forward and upward, reaching full extension above the head. The last skill that I observed was the slide. Jim missed two out of the four performance criteria, which included that he didn’t have his body turned sideways to desired direction of travel and he didn’t have a short period where both feet were off the floor. Jenn had just missed one of the performance criteria, which was that she didn’t have a period where both feet were off the floor. Through my observations I saw that Jim and Jenn had some little noticeable differences but were at around the same skill level of performance.

A teaching strategy that I used that helped connect towards the students was adequate demonstration. I used this strategy so the students knew exactly what skill they had to perform so they could go through the game more fluently, have a better time, and so I would be able to observe the skills more thoroughly. This strategy did work because all of the students were performing the skills that I showed them. Another strategy was that I repeating the directions to the students at each station of the game. This worked out because it kept all of the students on task during the game. One other strategy that I used was that I got involved in the game that the students were playing. I would use my arms as a barrier in which the student had to get low and slide under them.

After being at St. Mary’s for three weeks I have learned effective ways to keep the students attention and on task. One of these strategies was to really project my voice. I learned during the second week I was there that I wouldn’t get by if the students couldn’t all hear my voice. So I have learned to project my voice to grab all of the students’ attention. Another strategy that I’ve learned to use was to raise my arm in the air and either count or just have it raised when I am bring the students in for directions. One other way that I learned to keep the students on task was to always keep the game that they’re playing interesting. If I saw that the students were getting bored with the game, I would put a twist on it to keep it interesting and fun.