Always Have A Back-up Plan!

For this weeks lab my group worked with the cafeteria group, which was all the older boys. This week was much different than the other weeks when we worked with younger groups because every other time we got the students to play our games and for the most part, things basically went as planned. However, this week trying to teach these students games was basically useless. They had no interest in playing the games we had planned and wanted to just hangout and play basketball with their friends. After realizing that that was all they wanted to do, we decided to just start a pick up game, girls against boys and they ended up having a lot of fun trying to beat all the TA's. I always knew that it was important to go into classes with a back-up plan, but this week just ensured that for me and proved that I will also always have to respect what the students want to do and be willing to do that. To see more about what we did this week, check out my Lab Reflection!

Technology in P.E.

This week in lab we got the chance to experiment with the different games available in the exergame lab. I think that this was a very good experience for us because it made me understand a lot better how many different ways you can incorporate technology as a Physical Educator. My favorite part of this lab was playing the Dance game, similar to DDR. I liked this because it was a fun challenge for me, and also a great workout at the same time. I would love to be able to use this for my classes in the future, however I do realize that this is quite expensive and depending on where I am teaching may not be possible. During this lab though, we also played many small games that would be rather inexpensive. Some of these games were not only fun, but also educational. One that I found potentially helpful was a simple letter game, with the foam pieces we were playing with. While thinking of a game I could make with them. I thought it would be easy enough to simply scramble the letters and outlines around the gym, and have students put the pieces together, and also have them put the alphabet in order. This would benefit them in the phsychomotor domain by making them run around to get the scrambled pieces, and also cognitively by making them put the pieces in order. 

This photo is an example of Ryan and myself playing with the foam pieces I mentioned earlier and a representation of small, inexpensive technology I would definitely consider using in my classes!