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E-Calender and Wall of Champs

6/25/2014

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Tomorrow is the last day of school.  These last two days are half days and we spend the afternoons cleaning the office and putting things in their place for next year.  This means taking down our word wall and all the common core related teaching tools that have gone up over the year.  Likewise, it is time for each of our P.E. Champions to come down from their imaginary pedestals and head home with their owners.

At the beginning of the year, one of my goals was to develop our e-board.  An e-board is a very simplistic website for teachers.  I am not a huge fan of this platform because it is very restrictive but I understand why the district uses it.  I do, however, love the calendar tab.  Shortly into the school year, I decided to put something P.E. or Health related on every day to promote cognitive, social and physical learning outside of the school day.  As it would turnout, developing the e-calendar would be the easy part.  Getting students to visit it would be trickier.

I sent home a notice to parents about the e-board only to realize that many of our students did not have access to computers at home.  So, the next step was finding a time to teach the students how to login on to the e-board from their classroom computers.  This definitely increased the number of students that could visit the site but didn’t necessarily increase the number of students that would visit the site.

Next, I implemented the question of the week.  On Monday of each week, a question was posted that related to the unit we were teaching.  Students could submit their answer directly to the website via e-notes.  At the end of each week, all of the students that answered the question correctly got their name put in a hat.  We then pulled a name from the hat and the winner received some type of reward.

At first, the rewards were small purchased educational, recreational, or P.E. related products.  It soon became clear that this would be unsustainable.  I needed something that didn't cost anything but motivated the students. 

The ANSWER- life size P.E. Champions!  Not only were students motivated to get their picture up on the wall, but the voice bubbles attached also provided visual and written cues for learning movement, muscles groups and P.E. vocabulary.  Many of the questions of the week and P.E. Champion cues related directly to our Student Learning Objectives.  An ADDED BONUS- anytime an assembly took place in the gym, parents and administrators could see evidence of teaching in physical education.

Finally, we added the Student/Teacher P.E. Challenges.  Our school has a Splash Assembly bi-monthly to recognize student citizenship.  Our principal allowed us to add a physical challenge.  Any student that answered the P.E. Question of the Week correctly during the month could enter the challenge.  We had a push-up contest, a plank contest and a jump rope contest where the students tried to “Beat the Teach.”  These contests not only increased website participation but increased student motivation during our muscular strength and endurance units.

Final total of eboard visits 1524!  Not bad for the first year.  My goal for next year is 2500.  The PLAN- Develop an Eboard App so students can access the website on tablets and phones.  Also, I will be printing PE business cards for back to school night with the website, app and QR code on it.  Maybe even a Southdown PE Facebook page and Twitter account!

(Eboard Calender - http://www1.eboard.com/eboard/servlet/BoardServlet?ACTION=TAB_SHOW&ACTION_ON=TAB&OBJECT_ID=652682&SITE_NAME=Huntington&BOARD_NAME=lhefele-tmatthews&SESSION_ID=x2a5311jx6723l1886&TAB_ID=652682&Month=3&Year=2014)

(PS- To make life size Champs, insert a picture into an Excel document and drag it to the size you would like. 
 A few pointers: adjust the margins so that you don't waste a lot of paper; use a glue stick to connect the pages; printer ink is expensive so have students wear light color clothes; print in black and white and use a crayon to color the white in.  Laminate and post!)


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Equipment Hall of Fame

6/13/2014

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I love equipment!  I want as many students engaged at a time as possible, so if I have a class of 60 students and we are working on dribbling a basketball, I am going to have 60 balls.  Some will think I am crazy blowing up 60 balls for one or two weeks  and then deflating them, however, I believe that if you want students to learn a skill, then repetition is the key to success.  I can’t understand having long lines of students waiting for a turn when there are balls in the closet collecting dust.  I find waiting your turn to be a green flag for shenanigans. 

I am also somewhat of an equipment snob!  If I had my way, every item of equipment I own would be in rainbow colors.  Not only do I find it visually pleasing and motivating, I also feel it adds structure to the class.

The Dilemma- This is my second year at Southdown Primary.  For those of you that team-teach, you will understand that in the beginning it’s like being thrown into a fixed marriage.  You have to figure out how to live with your work spouse.  Compromise is the key.  Thankfully, after two years I think we are really starting to find our groove.  We don’t agree on everything but we respect each other and find a way to make it work.

So here’s the thing.  We have very limited space for the equipment that I love and cherish.  And, just like at my home, I have no use for things that serve no purpose.  For example, I have no patience for a ceramic rabbit but I am okay with a candle or a vase.  Thus my battle over the one hundred and forty plastic soup containers my co-worker has collected that are taking up room that could be occupied by my precious, store bought, and colorful equipment!  I moaned and groaned until I succeeded on having them moved to the very back of the hidden compartment under the stage in the gym.

Until….field day.  We designed a mural for field day to represent Curious George Feeds the Animals.  We needed to find a lot of Frisbees to use as food for the animals.  Thus, the tops to the soup containers were excavated from the catacombs and decorated as bananas.  Begrudgingly, I had to admit, Sportime and Gopher could not have supplied a better alternative. 

After field day we started track and field.  We were having a spectacular unit when Mother Nature hit us with a forecast of 5 days of rain!  Our gym is too small to run a meaningful track unit indoors.  With only 8 mats to teach jumping with, we decided on combining the field event long jump with the beginning of our golf unit- putting.  We set up 8 standing broad jump stations and 8 putting stations.

When I dug through the equipment, I was dismayed to find we only had 5 irons and no putting greens!  Field hockey sticks made the perfect putters, but what to do for holes?  You guessed it! Soup cups!

These plastic, colorless, bane of my existence, cups  were the most fun, exciting and creative piece of equipment we have used since the noodle!  Groups of 2-4 students took turns creating the equivalent of a miniature golf hole.  Each student took a turn trying to putt into the design and then the design was changed to create the next hole.  Students kept score: 1 stroke for a hole in one, 2 strokes if it hit the structure and 3 strokes if it missed entirely.  Every student was engaged in authentic math calculations, hole creation or putting.  If we had manicured commercially produced putting greens there would have been students waiting without purpose.  Not a single behavior issue all week.  Brilliant!!!

Soooooooooooo!  Into my equipment “Hall of Fame” and out of the useless junk dungeon go the “Sweet and Sour Soup Plastic Containers!”

(I wish they came in colors!)


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Reflecting on Teaching and the Ducheene Smile

6/4/2014

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Me:  “Okay children, today I am going to jog with you. I am the leader – do not pass me!” 
(I wanted to make sure my kindergarten students understood the route and to set a pace for them.  Half way through the run, a student started passing me.)
Me: “You are not supposed to pass me!” I stated.
Student: “It’s not me! My sneakers are moving too fast!”
Me: Ducheene Smile

Ducheene Smile- The Duchenne smile involves both voluntary and involuntary contraction from two muscles: the zygomatic major (raising the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi (raising the cheeks and producing crow's feet around the eyes). A fake smile or, as I like to call it, a "Say Cheese" smile involves the contraction of just the zygomatic major since we cannot voluntarily contract the orbicularis oculi muscle. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thriving101/201001/what-science-has-say-about-genuine-vs-fake-smiles)

I have begun reflecting on my teaching this year.  Some of the goals I set for the year were things like increasing assessments, addressing standards, maximizing student participation, increasing parent/student communication and increasing my use of technology.  At the beginning of the school year, we are required to set goals using the Danielson Rubricon.   Personally, I make a serious effort to choose and attain my goals,  not necessarily so I can get a better rating from my supervisor,  but because I believe that this rubric is a solid tool for improving my performance as a teacher.   We made some real improvements and terrific additions to our program because of these goals.

However, I also set another goal for myself that had nothing to do with Danielson.  I presented at a conference in Rockwood, Missouri last summer.  At the conference I had the good fortune to meet and attend a session by Artie Kamiya.  In his session, he quoted research that stated- “Students who feel that their PE teachers are supportive (i.e., care, interested, concerned) tend to be more engaged and physically active.”  In addition, “PE teachers who are supportive, not controlling, and provide students a safe environment will grow to enjoy PE and physical activity.”  The Ducheene Smile is one indicator to students of true caring and support.  So I set a goal to strive to show more individual interest in my students and achieve more Ducheene Smiles. 

I write whimsical stories to introduce PE lessons, I am notorious for practical jokes and rarely go through a day without a belly laugh, however, as this year comes to an end, I cannot consider myself a distinguished teacher (to use Danielson terminology) with respect to sincere positive emotional investment in all my students.

It’s precisely the students that need structure and control that I need to find the strength to be supportive, concerned and smile with.  It’s easy to Ducheene a well behaved, athletic, over achiever.  It is much harder to take the time to get to know and smile with the students that struggle to stay focused, are not intrinsically involved and are continually uncooperative.

So, while I have attained the majority of my Danielson goals, I am extending my Ducheene goal into next year.  I am going to take a deep breath and realize that those students aren’t trying to misbehave and disrupt, their sneakers are just moving too fast!

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    Lynn Hefele is a physical education teacher at Southdown Primary School in Huntington, NY and the President of Literature Enhanced Physical Education

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