St. Mary's Goes Up in Blaze

After viewing the students’ movement patterns this past week, there was plenty of variability seen across the board. I noticed that sometimes age is not an issue, that perhaps, a younger student may be more advanced than an older student. This leads me to understand that different students progress at different rates and that there must be another influence in the students’ life that may be affecting this. There could be genetic reasons for example, or perhaps the environment itself could be another reason. I worked with two students, student A and student B. There was plenty of variability between the two of them for all of the movement skills of leaping, horizontally jumping and sliding. Student A had a hard time grasping the concepts of each skill and how to do them, while student B showed good progressions throughout the class. Throughout the day I used the teaching strategies that I was taught and thought were going to be most productive. I got down to their level, explained thoroughly, used demonstrations, did not ask questions I did not want to hear and so on. The effect went well, I was able to relay my message across and get the students running and playing in no time. In my opinion, the most effective strategy is getting down the students level, without doing so one can never expect to grab the attention of the students, the students will quickly divert their attention elsewhere and the teacher will have no effect at all. The most effective strategy to capture the children’s attention and keep them on task is to use props, props and more props. Props are such a good way to get them to listen to you, understand your activity and have them playing in no time. For example, when Blaze showed up at St. Mary’s all the students energy went off the Richter scale and started to have the times of their lives. Now I know I cannot have a real dragon every time, but it does not always have to be to that extent. As the teacher we have to be innovative and creative to optimize the playing time for the children.