355 Field Experience 3/21/12

Today at CCA was my first time teaching a full 40 minute lesson. I was very nervous going into the teaching experience by myself. You never know what to expect when you are out in the field teaching real children, not just your peers at Cortland. For my lesson I chose to teach basic dribbling to start a basketball unit. I chose basketball because the equipment that I had to work with was limited. I know that equipment is not an excuse for just doing sports and not lifetime activities, but that is what I chose to do. The students were very excited to get a chance to play basketball for the next few classes. The first thing I had the students do was play bulldozers and builders as a quick warm up. I wanted a game that was simple to explain but would help them start listening to my directions. After that I decided to work on a bit of behavior management. I remember talking about personal space and general space in lab and realized that this class could definitely use these concepts. I talked briefly about what general and personal space were and that it needed to be obeyed at all times. I also talked about how to hold the basketball when I was talking. This took time for the students to really understand and get down but after one full class the students began to understand it. Another behavior problem I recognized was that the students do not listen to the directions and be patient. When I would explain an activity the students would tend to talk and not take in every direction so I would end up repeating myself multiple times. Another problem was that when I would ask the students to do something or get equipment they would all run over to the basketballs and knock each other over. I had to have the students walk back to the baseline and tell them to quietly walk over to the basketballs and grab one. Even then the students were fighting over which basketball to use. When that happened I had the students return to the end line again and told just half of the students to grab a basketball and then had the other half grab one after they returned. I continued with different dribbling drills adding one cue at a time. I figured the students would be able to remember and get used to each cue one at a time better than all at once. A lot of the class ended up I ended up working on behavior management concepts because the students needed to learn how the class would run and the different routines and protocols I was going to put in. The students began to get used to what I wanted to do by the end of the class.