St. Mary's Stars

Last semester I officially entered the Physical Education block and was a student in Dr. Yang’s PED 201 class, Motor Development. In Motor Development our class went to St. Mary’s Elementary to assist with the St. Mary’s Stars after school program about eight times throughout the semester. This gave me my first chance to instruct children as a Physical Educator. During our time at St. Mary’s we were each given the opportunity to get our feet wet and lead our own activities with the students of St. Mary’s. Our challenge was to engage the children in games that involved the particular motor movement that we were given each day such as a hop, skip or throw. This experience helped build my confidence while gaining various strategies that I have found to be successful in grasping the attention of children. This semester I was given the opportunity to go back to St. Mary’s, this time as a Lab Assistant. I was able to use the knowledge that I learned through my own experience in Motor Development to mold SUNY Cortland’s next class of Physical Educators. Going back to St. Mary’s as a T.A. this time helped me further built on what I learned last semester as a student in Motor Development. This time however, I was able to see the gym from a different prospective. Instead of leading activities myself I was able to observe Dr. Yang’s 201 class leading games. I watched the students come across some of the same struggles that my fellow students and I found ourselves battling last semester. Some of these struggles included finding age appropriate games for the children, keeping the instruction to a minimum and most of all gauging the children’s attention. In both of my experiences I found one common theme, maintaining the children’s attention was the most difficult challenge of all. The children react best when they are given the chance to use their imaginations and when there are neat props to grasp their attention. Dr. Yang, my fellow T.A.’s and I continued to press this idea with the 201 students throughout the semester. The students of 201 responded very well. Throughout the semester I saw unbelievable improvement from the class. This was illustrated at our last meeting at St. Mary’s when the students all designed Christmas activities for the children. The students of 201 were extremely creative with their ideas and it showed by the kids interactions in the activities. Overall, I was proud of everyone’s improvement throughout the semester and I hope all the students will continue their success throughout their years here at SUNY Cortland. I feel that my second experience at St. Mary's was even better than the first. It helped me further reiterate on all that I learned last year and it was very gratifying to be able to help my fellow peers improve on their abilities.

Quiz 6

Here is my 255 Quiz 6

Sport Stacking

For Lab D I wanted to teach a sport that I knew most of my students would not be familiar with. I decided to teach the sport of competitive cup stacking. I was introduced to the sport last Christmas when my mother or “Santa” gave me my very own set of speed stacking cups as a Christmas gift. That night during our families Christmas party I brought the cups out to try with my family. Before I knew it my family was having blast dueling it out on my dining room table, competing to see who could stack and un-stack the cups in the fastest time. Since last Christmas I seemed to forget how much fun we all had speed stacking. It was brought to my attention again when a fellow teacher, Mark Mayo and I were brain storming for ideas that we could teach for Lab D. He mentioned speed stacking and I instantly fell in love with the idea of teaching it to my students. I wanted to do something different that the students would enjoy learning. When I though back to how much fun my family had speed stacking, I knew it would be a big hit with my students. My only concern was that I would not have enough sets of cups for all 19 students in the class. When I informed Dr. Yang about my worries he informed me that Dr. Davis had a sport pack which was giving to him from the leader in sport stacking, called Speed Stacking. Dr. Davis was more than happy to loan them to me for my lesson. This kit was a life saver. The kit contained 300 cups, which was enough so that each student to have their very own set of 12 cups. During the lesson, I started out with a warm-up called slaps. This was to get the classes hands warmed up and ready to speed stack. Next, I showed the class a video of last years WSSA World Championships. The students responded well to the video and seemed eager to learn it themselves.
During the video we ran into a little problem when Joe Brown, a student in the class acted up and decided that he was not as eager to learn the sport as everyone else in the class. He proceeded to kick over the stacks of cups that I had set aside for the class. He was also verbalizing his displeasures with the lesson with curse words. His behavior was unacceptable and I was forced to sit him out for the remainder of the class. After I handled the episode with Joseph I proceed with the lesson. I taught the class how to stack a three and six pyramid. The class did very well. Some students were even able to go well beyond my expectations and challenged themselves by stacking the cups upside down and with their eyes closed. This let me know the class was ready we moved on to the next activity. The next activity was a speed stacking fitness relay race. I split the class into five groups of three or four students. From there, the class performed speed stacking relay races which were designed to incorporate fitness moves while speed stacking. The students had to perform a fitness move such as jumping jacks before stacking the cups and then running back and to tag the next partner in line. Overall, I felt the class went well but if I were to do it over I would change a few things. I would substitute relay races with speed stacking stations. Even though the relays were a big hit with the students I felt that there was too much standing around. Stations would be a good alternative to get the whole class moving all at once.
Here is my Sport Stacking Lesson Time Coding Form

Here is my Speed Stacking Packet

Here is my speed stacking transcript

Here is my feedback form

Why We Should Relay...

I think it is safe to say that almost everybody in the United States has a family member, friend or friend of a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. Personally, my Mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer when I was only in 11th grade. Today I am proud to say that she has been cancer free for 5 years and counting. The fact is that cancer has an impact on everyone in the world someway or somehow. That is why we all need to relay against it. Supporting the cause of cancer is something that I wish I had done earlier and is something that I urge everyone to do. I am saddened that it took my Mothers diagnosis to wake me up and realize how much work there is to be done. Every little bit helps and brings us closer to getting a grip on this terrible disease. For those who do not already know relay for life is this Saturday on November 22, 2008. Be there and support cancer!!!
With relay for life coming up this Saturday I can’t help to think about a very emotional speech that the great NC State Basketball Coach, Jimmy V gave during the 1993 ESPY awards just before cancer took his life.

A lesson in sportsmanship

The definition of sportsmanship is conduct and attitude considered as befitting participants in sports, especially fair play, courtesy, striving spirit, and grace in losing. On April 26, 2008 Liz Wallace and Mallory Holtman of the Central Washington softball team defined these words. This remarkable act of sportsmanship can teach us all a very valuable lesson, what it truly means to show sportsmanship.

Explorer Scavenger Hunt, A Big Success!!!

I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt that our 255 T.A.’s put together for our lesson on last Friday. I could tell it took a lot of time to prepare. At the end I feel that all their hard work paid off big time. The lesson was a big success. I really like the way that they were able to educate us about old explorers while making us sweat. I was running constantly throughout the entire lesson which I think is great. I also thought that it was cleaver the way they had us text messaging them the pictures that we found throughout the lesson. That is something that I feel a lot of kids would be really into. I feel like I learned a lot about creative on during last week’s lesson. The T.A.’s showed us all first hand that as physical educators we can also play a role in educating kids not only physically but in other subjects such as math, science and history. I am going to keep last Friday’s lesson in the back of my mind for when I am creating my own future lessons.

Gaga Ball Lesson PLan #1

Here's My Gaga-Ball Lesson Plan...

Here's My Ultimate Frisbee Transcript...

Every Coach's Dream: Jashaun Agosto, 11 year old basketball star!

Awareness Test

NFL Rush

http://www.nflrush.com/ ...Attention fellow teachers, heres a site that has a lot of good contests, play activities and fundraisers for teachers, parents and children.

Third Teaching Experience

In my third teaching experience I continued with my Gaga Ball lesson. This time I focused on defense aspect of Gaga Ball. For a warm-up I had the students work on the basic hitting cues that we went over in the last class. With a partner, I had the students simply hit the ball back and forth. Then I had the students play a game which I referred to as “monkey in the middle, Gaga ball style.” The student in the middle had to attempt to dodge the gaga ball when it was hit below their knees and catch the ball when it was hit above the knees. Overall, I felt like the lesson went much better than my last two but Mr. Yang did point out some bad habits that I am going to have to work on breaking. One problem with my presentation that I was not aware of is that I seem to clap my hands a lot when I get nervous. It is not a major thing but it is enough to distract the students when I am giving instruction and is something that I am going to have to attempt to break while moving on.

Here is my Transript for this lesson


Here is my Gaga Ball Time Coding Form

Here is my Feedback Form

Second Teaching Experience

My second teaching experience was okay but it did not go as I would have liked it to. I taught a sport called Gaga Ball. I had the kids play a game called the circle slap game where the class got into groups of five and slapped the ball around the center of the circle to each other. After a little while of that, I made it into a competition where the kids tried to hit the ball into each others legs. They could block there legs with their arms. Once each student got hit three times they were out until the game was over. Overall, I thought the game went well but I realized that as far as my instruction goes, I need work. I felt like in the future I have to do a better job explaining the game because I noticed that students were not sure of what to do at first.

SUNY Cortland Mini-Conference

On October 10, 2008 I had the privilege of attended the SUNY Cortland Mini- Conference for Physical Education. Our PED 255 class opened the conference with an introduction that we created which followed with a fun game called mix-mix mingle-mingle to get the audience loosened up. I thought we did a good job setting the stage for an emotional speaker named John Passarini. In 2000 John was named the Adapted Physical Education National Teacher of the Year. He also received the Disney Outstanding Teacher Of The Year award in 2003. Later on he was featured on the Wayne Brady show for his big heart and touching relationship with a little girl by the name of Katie Lynch. Not only is John Passarini an outstanding teacher but he is an outstanding person with a huge heart. Overall I was extremely moved by Johns speak. To me John Passarini personifies the reason I entered the Physical Education major here at SUNY Cortland.

"Shotgun Teaching" Assignment

In the beginning of the year Dr. Yang gave our 255 class a teaching assignment to get the class more comfortable instructing in front of our peers. He called it “Shotgun teaching.” We were paired with a partner and each group of two was given a part of a lesson such as task, inter-task variation or closing. We went in order from the beginning of the lesson to the end of the lesson. Each group was to pick up where the last group ended off. The idea was to be able to pick up where the prior group left off without missing a beat. My partner and I received the closing. The activities that day included hoping through hola- hoops that were laid out on the ground, jump roping with two feet and jump roping with one foot. At the end of class I called the class in and wrapped the class up with some words of encouragement. I let the class know that they all did a very good job and that everyone showed good energy. Then, I left the class off with what I had planned for next class to get the kids excited about coming back. Overall, I thought I did well. The lesson helped build my confidence for future teaching assignments. It was a good preview for things to come in EDU 255.

First Teaching Experience

My first teaching experience did not go as well as I would have liked. When I got in front of the class I froze, forgot what I was going to say and was not able to project my voice as well as normal. When I look back on it I feel like it was good that I got my feet wet and realize that there is no where to go but up. As I get more experience in front of the class I will gain confidence and become more and more comfortable. Although my first teaching experience did not go as I thought it up in my head I still feel good about my future.

Hello!!!

Hello, this is Richard Perrone and I am an inspiring Physical Education teacher at SUNY Cortland. I have just entered the teaching block and am currently refining my teaching skills. I am becoming more and more confortable infront of the class teaching and am excited for my future. I am also very excited about the 2008/2009 NFL season. Lets Go JETS!!!