Today at SUNY Cortland's Exergame lab I got the best of both worlds. I got to play video games while exercising at the same time. This was a great experience going to the Exergame lab. I got to play xbox 360 while at the same time exercising to power the controller I was using. I thought this new technology was awesome. This new technology is a great way to get kids that play video games to be able to exercise and get a work out even if all they want to do is play video games. I hope all this new technology in the Exergame lab really makes a break through in the world today and starts to become popular in kids homes all over the world. This technology can help improve the health of many kids lives growing up and as a future physical education teacher that is the main goal to improve the health and skills of all kids lives.
Also in the Exergame lab I was introduced to different games that are used to increase physical activity for younger kids. These games were used to increase physical activity and to help improve and practice different learning skills. A game that I was introduced to was call Hyper dash. This game had many different ways and variations in which you could play. Another game that I was introduced to was a game like hyper dash except it was with animals and I think it was called Animal dash. One way in which I could modify this game is placing all the toy animals on the floor and have the kids make a big circle around the animals. I'll have one kid start with the toy and have them press the button to start the game. While the kid that started with the toy is searching for the animal he/she has to find, the students on the outside will be doing whatever exercise I shout out while their class mate finds the animal. For example i'll yell jumping jacks and the students will have to do jumping jacks until their class mate finds the right animal. Once that student finds the right animal then he/she passes it off to a random student they pick and now they have to go find the next animal and the other students will be doing another activity that I will call out. This will go on until all the animals are found and the game is over. We would see how fast we found all the animals the first game and try to beat our time game by game.
Today was a great day at St. Mary's. When my group and I first got to St. Mary's we were expected to have the older kids and was prepared with games to play with them. But as we got into our groups, to our surprise we were unexpectedly assigned to the Pre-K group again. So we went outside because it was a nice day out and the Pre-K class was already outside on the playground. We had nothing prepared for the group and was just going with the flow when we first got into the playground. As soon as I walked into the playground, I joined in the game of tag that the students were already playing. Of course they made me be it every time, even though I would tag someone else.
After tag I sat down at a little table that was at the playground with a student because he was tired from running around from playing tag, and so was I. To my surprise about half the class circled around me and started to have conversations with me. I went around the circle asking the students what there favorite flavor gum was. This got them interacting with each other as well, asking each other what there favorite flavors were. Then I went around the group and asked each student if they had a brother or sister at home and they would all get into these stories about how old there siblings were, what they liked to do with them when there home. I would ask one student if they had a brother and they would tell me yeah and the next student would say me too and start talking to the student I just asked.
They all loved talking to me and it was so easy for me to have a conversation with the students about anything. Then we all went inside and came up with a game for them to play off the top of our heads. This day showed us to be ready for anything and to always think on our toes. At the end of the day I really enjoyed the day and was kind of glad we had the Pre-K class again. It showed me I can think on my feet and easily get along and think like a kid with the students.
Lab 4 Evaluations
Today was a fun day. It was Hawaii theme today and overall it was a great day for getting a lot of experience for teaching. My group and I had the Pre-K group today. We first started out in the Pre-K room and had everything planned out for how our time was going to be used and what activities we were going to do. After they had snack time, I was going to read a book to the class and was already sitting in the chair with the book in my hand waiting for the class to finish up eating. But then to the groups and my surprise, the teacher rounded up the students and told them that they were going into the gym now. This was so unexpected for the group and this caught us off guard. I thought this was great though because in the future any thing can happen when teaching and you have to be ready for whatever comes your way. So we went into the gym and came up with a jungle like game for the students that was related to the Hawaiian theme. All the kids loved it and had a great time. So today I learned you always have to be on your feet when teaching and be prepared for anything.
Lab 3 Assessment
In class we were put into three different groups and had to debate which group would be the best for a physical education class why or why not. So my group and I got stuck with probably the hardest group out of all the different groups to debate about. My group had using stick in a physical education class. Going into this debate my group and I was well prepared for this debate and to win it all. We even dressed to impress wearing nice dress clothes. But on the day of the debate it was much harder arguing for sticks in physical education class than we thought. We made good arguments and answered all questions thrown at us by the board intelligently. I was even getting a little heated and started to yell a bit at another group during one of the questions they asked us. Overall we did a great job and we tried our best, but the outcome was that we came in last out of the three groups for the great debate. We still did great and it was fun arguing and making valid points to try and win.
