I have been teaching track and field. The only experience I have had with track and field prior to this module is from my physical education class in middle and high school. I have learned a lot about teaching these units. So far I have taught long jump, sprinting, hurdles, shot put, discus, and javelin throw. This has been a great experience because I have learned a lot about the different events in track and field. Track and field is a great sport because there are so many events that most students will find an event that they enjoy participating in. It's important to know how to demonstrate the skill you are teaching as well as have knowledge in the skill. If you can't properly demonstrate or explain the skill then your students won't get much out of the lesson or will learn the wrong way to perform the skill. I made sure to read up about track and field before I taught it as well as know all the skill cues and have visuals for my students. I demonstrated to the best of my ability and always picked a student in the class to demonstrate as well. That way students got to see a few different demonstrations.
I had a hard time demonstrating the discus throw, I had never thrown one before and had the students using frisbees since we only had 2 real discuses. The frisbees were so large that the students weren't able to get their hands over the whole frisbee and therefore were not gripping the frisbee like they would a discus. Since I could not demonstrate the skill of throwing a discus it was important that I was able to explain it correctly. By being able to explain how to the students still understood how to throw the discus and got in some good practice. I did pretty well with the rest of the lessons with demonstrating. I was comfortable demonstrating and teaching the long jump and sprinting.
In the past I have also taught volleyball which I didn't have very much experience with. I enjoy teaching lessons of sports and skills I'm not familiar with because I learn a lot more. Since I'm already comfortable teaching lessons with sports I'm familiar with I think its more beneficial to be graded and get criticism on the sports and skills I'm not familiar with.
You definitely hit on the key points of researching and using skilled students for demonstrations.
ReplyDeleteNot many people would rather be graded on teaching something they're unfamiliar with, but it's also such a great learning experience. You'll have a huge repertoire of skills when you go out to get a job and increase your marketability that much more.