Reflective Teaching Log

Strengths of Your Teaching:

One of my strongest characteristics as an educator is my enthusiasm while giving instruction and feedback. While especially useful when working with younger students, it still helps maintain engagement when dealing with anyone. While teaching my classmates, I found using enthusiastic energy when giving instructions made the implementation of the rules more interesting for them. Another one of my strengths is adaptability. I often find drills that I pictured in my head do not always play out the way I imagined they would. By being able to spot a problem, and ideally come up with an improvement for the group I’m working with allows me to make sure the desired goal can be met. An example would be the change between the age group we were educating on Thursday. Knowing their stride length and overall speed was going to be a lot greater than a group of preschool children meant I needed to change the distance for the activity. Something as minimal as getting them to go to the objective and all the way back doubled the distance for the activity. Another strength that was more highlighted by my group members was being involved in the activity. Although our activity required someone to run the game, it provided the opportunity for the rest of my group to jump into the activity with the students. Having the educator jump in makes it more engaging and allows the group to feel more connected.

Areas of Improvement:

One area I feel I lack is creativity. Although I’m good at making quick adjustments to smooth out the execution of an activity, giving creative twists and environments to the activities themselves is something I could stand to improve on. This would open new avenues, and get students that otherwise might not be engaged to participate. Although there was nothing wrong with the game my group and I decided to run, it lacked some of the great imaginative qualities other groups managed to capture. Being allowed to go around and participate in the games of those groups was a great opportunity to see this in action and reflect on my own skill set. Another area I could stand to improve in is empathy when coming up with activities. I generally coach older athletes and have a good grasp of their level of physical competency. However, when planning for the preschool kids, my group often needed to remind me that they may not be at the level for the activities I was suggesting. Had I been alone in this experience, I may have had a rude awakening when attempting to implement the activities I had selected.

Statement on Planning:

As previously mentioned, there were times where I was suggesting activities that although I thought were appropriate for the given age group, may have been a little too advanced in practice. That being said, after brainstorming and settling on certain games, I was able to come up with some good accommodations and changes to them based on the skill set of preschool students. Overall it was a very egalitarian process which allowed every member to pitch ideas and be heard. This allowed for us to work together in coming up with progressive activities to see where the kids were at, and help them work toward our goal for each game. Overall, I feel we managed to draw up a well formulated plan that encased multiple activities and different elements of physical literacy.

Modifications Made While Teaching:

Due to the short duration of actually teaching and limiting it to one activity, there were not a lot of opportunities or need to make modifications. However, as previously mentioned, we did change the distance of the Red Light Green Light activity to accommodate the older age group. Another more minor modification was made due to limiting the session to a single activity. We had a theme planned that was going to carryover into Red Light Green Light. But due to doing the activity in isolate, we decided to drop the theme and replace the “Blue Light” with just striking and holding a pose. However, on top of all of this, the feedback we got after the activity on modifications we could have made gave some very useful insight. A great modification that was suggested would be to have another person with a set of cones on the starting side for the kids to see while making their way back to the starting line.

What Did You Learn:

There’s only so much you can learn from talking about teaching. Until you actually sit down and make a plan, and actually implement it, it’s hard to get an actual idea of what works and what doesn’t. Although the change between working with preschool kids to our classmates offered different challenges, it still provided a good learning experience. For one, getting a sense of group management. By getting the group to come in and sit down while giving instructions, it limits potential distractions. We did this the first time, but then just called the group back over while giving subsequent instructions. Something I didn’t consider until after teaching. Another thing I’ve taken away from this is the difficulty of timing. Although I think we made good use of our allotted time, ten minutes also quickly snuck up on me. If Ashley didn’t give me a quick last minute warning, I would have blissful continued right into the next groups time having felt we had only spent maybe five minutes on the activity up until that point. Lastly, I learned a lot from watching other groups teach. Seeing different strategies and considerations in place gave me a lot of elements to reflect on going forward.

Additional Info:

Although I was a bit intimidated to be working with such young kids, I was still a little sad to not get the opportunity due to the weather. However, I think the alternate arrangements, and getting to see what every other group had planned out was a great back up and gave a lot of opportunities to learn.

#PHED321 #Teaching