355 Field Experience 2/7/12

Today I observed another class at Cincinattus. The class that I observed was a sixth grade class and they were working on floor hockey today. The students started with a warm up consisting of push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks, suicides and laps around the gym. The students had a large amount of trouble completing the assigned amount of push ups which was 10. The form during the push ups was incorrect and most students could not complete more than 1 proper push up. I do not believe that this warm up was very effective because the students disliked it greatly and there was poor form on everything but the jumping jacks. The suicides are never fun for anyone and I know I would hate having to do them for a warm up. I think warm ups should get away from the old PE way of doing things and try to incorporate fitness inside of a fun activity. Also, although the students were working on fitness during their warm up there were not learning what benefits the different activities gave them. They did not learn about muscular strength, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility or body composition. These 5 factors are very important in health based fitness and should be incorporated and taught in every lesson in some capacity. I think that if the teachers worked on proper form on the warm up activities the students would receive significantly more benefit. Also, I observed that the teachers did not check on exactly how many and if the students actually completed their warm up. The floor hockey lesson itself did not consist of much learning either. The teachers taught basic cues to passing and just had the students passing in lines. Just passing in lines does not transfer into a game like situation and is not authentic. There were no tactical concepts involved and I do not believe that future game play will be effective without more authentic practice situations.