In Lab D I taught a lesson with the stability ball, focusing on the core muscles. I noticed from reviewing the video that I did well in the lesson but that there are still many things that I need to make improvements on. Although there are some things that I still need to make better, there are also many things that I have already become highly competent in.
The lesson was only about thirteen or fifteen minutes long, making it very hard to include everything in the lesson that was really needed to make it a complete. I realized from the lesson being so constricted for time that I was not able to have the students participate in as much physical activity as they should have. If the lesson had been longer I would have been able to have the student's practice the tasks with more repetitions and for a longer period of time.
One other thing that I could have done was give the students more feedback. I was only able to identify that I gave three of the students feedback, and realize that I should have given more. I hope that later I will be able to give the students more feedback so that they know that they are doing the task properly, but I also want them to be able to realize what they are doing wrong on their own.
One thing that I think was very important is the fact that I referred to safety very frequently. Safety is a key issue in physical education, and it is very common for students to "monkey around" and put themselves into situations that can cause harm to themselves or others without thinking of the consequences. In the video that I have posted above there is a section, from 2:35 to 2:55, that I find very vital to teaching a lesson. I told the students about being safe while they are using the stability ball, and I told them this in a serious manner while adding some humor to try to keep their attention.
Even though I had already told the students not to throw the stability ball's at one another there was still an incident that occurred. One of the students, at the end of the lesson, randomly stood up and threw the stability ball at another student. As soon as this happened I controlled the situation by removing the student that had thrown the stability ball from the area that the other student was in. Since it occurred at the closure of the lesson I had the student that had committed the wrong doing come up to the front and stand with me while I was ending up the lesson. Once the class was completed I talked to the student so that the rest of the class was not distracted by the encounter and could continue to learn. I think that this is good because what happened between those two students was not a concern that needed to be dealt with while the other students were present.
I also think that I did well teaching the lesson in respect to being clear on the content. I think that I spoke clearly with what the tasks were, and the students all knew what I was talking about based on what I said during the lesson. I also asked the students frequently if they had any questions to make sure that they understood, and no one asked any questions. Because they did not ask any questions I concluded that I had done a good job when I was giving my explanations.
A large part of my lesson was that I included a video that I had created with two other people in the class that were also teaching with the stability ball. In this video we recorded a person performing an action while the person that was going to be teaching that lesson gave instructions to the task. We then took all of the short video's that we had made and created a DVD. In that we included pictures of the different instructors of the task and also the cues for the asks. I think that the video was very good because while it was playing the teacher can manage the class and help any students that may need it, or handle any other situations that need to be solved. Creating the video was also very nice because it was unique and something that no one else in the class had done.
Overall I think that this lesson was a success. Although I may have left out some very information, there were a lot of different things that I did do. I hope that in the future I am able to continue improving on my ability to teach, just as I have throughout my present teaching class.
