Fitzpatrick Student Teacher Blog Week #3

This week I made my first unit transition from Basketball into Dance. I was very timid about the idea of teaching dance. Of all the schools in the district, including three other elementary schools, an intermediate school, and a junior high, my placement is the only PE program that incorporates dance. According to my cooperating teacher, dance should be incorporated into elementary PE because it teaches student from a young age the ability to interact properly in social events outside of the classroom along with promoting an understanding of a lesser renown style of physical fitness.

Being told ahead of time the students are not necessarily big fans of the unit, I was not sure how to initiate the unit as I never expected to include music in a curriculum and never thought of the concept of incorporating it before. When talking to my teacher, her recommendation is to tackle the dances with positive, enthusiastic interest. As she put it, “If the students see you excited, they are going to be excited.” This is something I will definitely be taking to heart.

Tuesday I introduced the unit with a pre-assessment and introduced the Cha-Cha Slide. The introduction was luke-warm as I was still reserved about the topic. On Wednesday, however, everything started working in my favor. I took the opportunity to introduce a new dancing activity to the students, which was an absolute hit. Aptly named “Fortnite Freeze Tag,” students who were tagged had to freeze in place and perform dances made popular to them by the game, Fortnite. Getting the idea after watching my own kids constantly mimicking the dances at home, I wanted to include the students’ interests in the lesson in hopes to make it intriguing to them. Also, in relation to Standard 5 – Instructional Delivery, I have incorporated both music videos of the dances, along with gifs of dance movements associated to the dances to better engage students and allow constant observation for knowledge obtainment of the moves. While the unit thus far has been transitioned into successfully, as the teacher has pointed out that the students seem more enthused and interested this year than usual, I believe next week I am going to try and further understanding of the unit learning objectives by creating small dance groups for students to work in together so that they can assess and educate themselves.

The greatest and most heartwarming experience I have encountered while teaching over the past three weeks happened on Thursday. The day before, I taught the students a basic line dance to the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” In my first period class, there is a student who enrolled in the school two weeks before the winter holiday. The student had no previous experience with the line dance and struggled to grasp the concept of the timing and rhythm. While keeping my eye on the whole class, I spent a considerable amount of time throughout the duration of the lesson working with this student as he was much farther behind in his understanding than the other students. Giving him multiple learning strategies such as step counting and movement names to a beat, along with verbally and physically demonstrating the dance on a 1:1 ratio with the student and verbally praising when he succeeded, he was showing great strides of understanding rhythm and sequence by the end of the period. The next day when we reviewed the dance, the students performed the entire routine with 100% perfect rhythm and movement sequence. To my shock, I commended him and asked if he practiced at home to which he replied: “yes, I did.” I know a lot of students say they will, but never would I have expected such a strong turn around so fast. I was truly humbled by his willingness to learn.

Of course, not all dances for the 3^rd and 4th-grade levels are appropriate for 1^st and 2^nd. As a result, to be in accordance with Standard 3 – Planning for differentiated instruction, I had to I had to implement a dance more suitable to the cognitive and psychomotor abilities to these students. To do so, substituted “Cotton Eyed Joe” with the song, “Tony Chestnut.” “Tony Chestnut” is more appropriate as it not only aids in guiding the students in their dancing abilities through lyrics, but also aids in the development in word relationships as noted in standard CC.L.1.5.

At the beginning of the week, I spoke to each class and installed my personal expectation guidelines with them. Since the incorporation of said expectations, I am feeling much more comfortable with classroom management, but still, find holes in my teaching style that can use adjustments. My most difficult aspect is learning names, and I am realizing it is very difficult to control the behaviors of students when the students do not feel recognized. By not knowing their names, the students feel as if they are invincible. When I receive my own class, my first and foremost objective is going to be to learn every students’ name as soon as possible.

After this week, taking on a more hands-on role of the curriculum, utilizing my own lesson plans and ideas, I must day the most unexpected difficulty I have run into is finding the time in the day to prep! I get in every morning at 8am and still struggle to meet the needs of my prep time. And, unfortunately with the set-up of my schedule, the only break I have for a plan is at the last half hour of the day, so if I am not ready in the morning it throws my entire schedule off. My cooperating teacher has been an immense help in making sure I am prepped and meeting all of my class objectives. I had no idea how much actually happened behind the scenes when prepping for an elementary physical education class.

Taking on more responsibility has been taxing, to say the least, but it has been a great learning opportunity, and each day I feel as if I am requiring the organizational skills necessary to be a competent teacher. It is nerve-wracking, yet very exciting. More often the before do I find myself doubting my abilities, but I am sure that is normal as I continue to learn more about the profession and the true workings of a professional educator.

My goals for the week are to continue implementing my expectations, learn the names of the remaining students I am unsure of, be more inquisitive to the insight of my cooperating teacher’s educational philosophy.