NASPE Beginner Teacher Standards

Standard 1: Scientific and Theoretical Knowledge
Physical education teacher candidates know and apply discipline-specific scientific and theoretical concepts critical to the development of physically educated individuals.

To be successful as a physical education teacher, one must know how the body works. So far in my college career, I have take Anatomy I and II, Biomechanics, Motor Development and in the Fall of 2010, I will be taking Exercise Physiology and Motor Behavior. These classes are crucial as I will need to know how to explain to my students how to perform certain body movements.

Standard 2: Skill-Based and Fitness-Based Competence
Physical education teacher candidates are physically educated individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary to demonstrate competent movement performance and health-enhancing fitness as delineated in NASPE's K-12 Standards

Activity classes are not just for fun, they teach us proper form and also different methods of teaching different skills. So far in my college career I have taken Rhythm and Dance, Tactical Concepts, Skill Acquisition, Racket Activities, Adventure Activities and Aquatics. All of these classes have taught me the correct ways of performing skills and I now will be able to demonstrate them properly to my future students.

Standard 3: Planning and Implementation.
Physical education teacher candidates plan and implement developmentally appropriate learning experiences aligned with local, state and national standards to address the diverse needs of all students.

As a teacher, you must be able to have a flexible lesson. Not all students learn at the same level so you cannot teach as if they do. In my 255 class, and also in the CHAMP program last semester, I have had to repeatedly alter some lessons to fit the needs of certain students. I will have more practice with this in the future as I will be in the Adaptive Physical Education class in Spring of 2010.

Standard 4: Instructional Delivery and Management.
Physical education teacher candidates use effective communication and pedagogical skills and strategies to enhance student engagement and learning.

As a teacher, especially as a physical education teacher, you must have a loud and clear voice. This will ensure that your message gets across to the students. Also, to enhance learning, you can use visual aids. The visual aids should be very bright and creative so it "hooks" the students into the lesson.

Standard 5: Impact on Student Learning
Physical education teacher candidates utilize assessments and reflection to foster student learning and to inform instructional decisions.

This semester I was a "mentor" for Dr. Malmberg's EXS 197 class. In this class, we used many assessments to view the skills of our students and after we view them, we give them feedback on what they need to work on. During the semester, I met with many of my students and helped them develop their skills, which led to two of my students having the best scores out of all the EXS 197 students.

Standard 6: Professionalism
Physical Education teacher candidates demonstrate dispositions essential to becoming effective professionals.

Just a few days ago, I received a letter from Dr. Couturier congratulating me on consistently showing excellent professional dispositions through out the semester. I will continue to demonstrate these dispositions as I continue my way to becoming a successful Physical Education teacher.

Fight the Good Fight! Beat Those Viruses!

After playing the game Immune Attack, I feel as though I know a lot more about the immune system. It was loaded with information about the human body and is a great resource for information about different parts in the immune system. However, I felt as though the game play was too slow and also I had a tough time remembering my tasks because all the information was given before the task and there were no reminders. In my future career, I hope to help students of all subjects better understand what they are studying, and this is a perfect example. Because I am a physical education major, I have prior knowledge of biology. However, if I ever felt as though I needed more clarification, I could always study up some more on a subject so I can further assist my students. If a teacher from another subject felt as though his or her students are not understanding the material, I can develop some sort of game that the students can play during their physical education period so they can better understand what they are learning in class. I have developed a game for this subject to demonstrate how I would teach the immune system to my physical education class.

This is the ship I used in the game. It was really cool because it was in the body and I can only imagine how great it would be for a human to shrink him or herself enough to go into a ship and travel through someone's body.

This is the drone I used to defeat viruses. It also sent signals to different areas in the blood vessels for the macrophages to go to so they can engulf some of the harmful diseases.
Other screen shots from the game and also yours truly in action:


If you would like to play the Immune Attack game, you can find it here.


Here's another Immune Defense game for you all to enjoy.



A game that I feel will demonstrate to students what Immune Attack was about would be a game that has the kids active so their immune system is working harder. Also, the game would incorporate concepts about the immune system so if the students do not understand the information in the classroom, they will better understand it through physical activity.

Lesson Plan Updated
Task Sheet Updated
Activity Sheet
Answer Sheet

Fall Semester Recap

Here are some high lights from my Fall Semester, From B lab to D lab, with some ExerGame Expo and Mini Conference:

Guiding the Freshmen Through Their First Semester

During the Fall semester, I was a "mentor" for Dr. Malmberg in his EXS 197 lab. I was assigned a group of 7 students, 6 were freshmen and the other was a transfer junior. My duties as a mentor were to practice certain skills that these students will need as a physical education major and also help them with any issues they have with transitioning to the college life. For every Friday since the semester started, I spent 50 minutes with my students and helped them practice the skills such as a volleyball bump, serve, basketball lay-up, two-step punt, and forward and backward rolls. The total number of hours spent with the students added up to almost 11 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a mentor because it made me feel like I was making a difference in my students' lives because they came to me with their problems and I saw a significant improvement in their skills from the first day of class to the final test day. On the final test day, all the students were taped doing all the skills and Dr. Malmberg graded them on a scale of 1-4, with 4 being a 4 representation of the skill. Only one student got a perfect score on all of the skills, and it was my student Timothy Aubertine. Also, the highest grade from the girls was also from my group, Carissa Ficarro. Having both of the high scores be from my group made me extremely proud because it reflected how hard my students worked to become successful at their skills. Sadly, I do not have any photos from my experience to share with all of you.

Lab D: Bowling

For my final teaching lab, Lab D, I taught bowling. I felt extremely confident coming into this lesson because I learned a lot this year and I knew I was able to effectively teach this lesson. Seeing as this lesson was off campus at Cort-lanes, I knew my lesson was going to be cut short a bit because time was needed for the students to arrive and get their shoes and their bowling balls. As you can see in my lesson plan and my task progression sheet, I planned on doing many activities but I was only able to get to some of them. I also wanted to set up some Wii bowling but I was not able to because of the time constraints. In my feedback form, it shows that I only gave feedback to 5 different students, however if you listen to my audio, you can hear that I give more feedback but I do not say the names of the students I give feedback to. I cannot do the time coding sheet because the video of my lesson is only 5 minutes long whereas my whole lesson was 13 minutes long. Also, during the lesson I was faced with the challenge of an ESL student. I am able to understand Spanish fluently, however I cannot speak it fluently. I know that if I'm faced with this situation again I should find another student or teacher who can speak Spanish so I can get my point across. I felt as though this was my best lesson and I thank Dr. Yang and all the TA's for teaching me how to become a better teacher and I will remember these teachings in my future classes and profession.

NYS AHPERD 72nd Annual Conference

On November 20th, Cortland APEM, along with other Cortland teachers, attended the 72nd Annual NYS AHPERD Conference. The conference was a great way to network with former Cortland Alum and also with teachers from my area and talk to them about future positions. I went to four sessions but the one that stood out the most to me was Chris Wert's presentation on Kid Approved Games. This session was about many different kinds of games for kids in the elementary level. Chris really knew what he was talking about and it gave me a lot of hope in being able to make a change in the physical education world because Chris was a young guy and it showed that age doesn't matter in making a difference in the physical education world. On Thursday night, I actually got to meet Chris as I was on his South Central Zone team for Battle of the Zones. We almost made a come back in the game but ultimately came in second place. On Friday we ended the day at the Jay B. Nash Awards dinner, and the food was great. Seeing all the people there who love P.E. and want to make a difference in that area made me have so much more appreciation for what I want to do because it shows a lot of people want to help change and shape the world into a healthier life style. My Friday night ended with a three and a half hour ride home, which was only supposed to be an hour or so. Never listen to backseat drivers, they always make you take the wrong turn!

Slippery Rock University's Adaptive Physical Activity Awareness Day

On Wednesday November 11th, 2009, I went with some members of APEM to Slippery Rock University for their annual Adaptive Physical Activity Awareness Day. The drive there from Cortland is about 5 hours but it wasn't such a bad drive, since I wasn't the one driving. Once we were there we almost immediately started participating in the activities. The first one we did was Beep Baseball, here's a snap shot from that:
That game was really fun, although I had a very hard time hitting the ball with a full swing, so I had to result to bunting. The next activity we participated in was Wheelchair Shot Put. Brandon Herwick decided to challenge me, not knowing I used to throw shot put here at SUNY Cortland. His first throw from the wheelchair went about 35 feet. My first throw went about 45. He challenged me to a rematch and he got his second throw to go 40 feet. My second throw beat him yet again, going more than 50 feet. Our next activity was Blindfold Javelin, which was played with blindfolds and foam javelins. I won't talk about this activity because, although it was fun, I did not do so well seeing as I was beat by 2 girls, oh no! The rest of the day went smoothly as we were taken on a tour of the campus and got to see the barn where they hold their therapeutic recreation classes. In the barn they had about 10 different horses, and they were all beautiful. Later on we discussed the Master's program they offer at Slippery Rock and it sounds very intriguing. After that, we went to eat in their dining hall which was, sorry Neubig I still love you, absolutely amazing. We finished off the day with meeting some of the guys from Murderball. They are extremely intense and watching them play was great. We left Slippery Rock around 8:30 pm and got back to Cortland at 1:45 am. The experience I had at Slippery Rock was unforgettable and I cannot wait to go next year!