First Day of 355 Field Experience

My first day of observation/assisting/teaching at Cincinnatus Elementary went quite well. Tom Travers and I were assigned to the same school and we went out to see what was going on over at Cincinnatus. After signing in Tom and I introduced ourselves to the phys ed teachers and talked with them until the next class started. The lesson they were doing this day was on floor hockey. To start off the class the teachers had the students run laps around the gym. There were mats separating the two halves of the gym which would later be used for game play. Due to the fact that the mats split the gym in half the students had to jump over the mats when they came to them. I think this poses a big safety hazard that could have been easily avoided by just moving the mats. Also, on one side of the gym there was floor hockey equipment on the mats. The students were jumping over this as well, which poses another safety hazard. It took the teachers a few minutes to change the location of the mats for the warm ups. The lesson focus was on passing and stick handling. The teachers gave a demonstration on how the students needed to pass the pucks to one another. The students lined up across from a partner and practiced passing back and forth. The students passed back and forth for about 6 or 7 minutes until the teachers changed to stick/puck handling. The teachers demonstrated that the students will handle the puck using the correct cues down and around their partner and back to their original spots. When they reach their original spot they pass the puck to the partner so they can do the same thing. After a few minutes of this the students were split into teams and started playing a game. They played for more than 10 minutes and the class was over soon after. I thought that this lesson had some strong points but some low points as well. One positive thing was that the teachers combined a skill previously taught, passing, with a new skill or puck handling. One negative thing that I observed was that there was nothing really being taught to the students. There were no fitness concepts discussed at all and it seemed more like the teachers were rolling out the pucks for the students to lead as quickly as possible into game play. I thought that the lesson had a lot of potential moments for teaching the students. For example after the warm up the teachers could have had a class talk about why the warm up was necessary and what benefits it had for the students. Also, at the end of the lesson a check for understanding about the cues taught in class and what will be going on next class to get the kids excited in their next phys ed class.