Heart beat it up!

When i was doing my observations, there was a class called fitness for life which is somewhat a combination of a health class and a physical education class. Some days they are in the gym plaaying games that gets there heart rate going, and other days they are in the class room. I noticed that all of the students in his class were wearing heart rate monitors. The students were taught how to use them and they record their heart rates at given times throughout the class when they are participating in physical activity. They try and reach their target heart rate and aintain it throughout the duration of the class time. i feel that this technique/strategy for measureing a students fitness level and active participation is something that would work in any physical education class and is something that i definately want to try and incorporate into one of my classes.

Watched and Learned!

I was watching the Eastern Oregon football team work out the other day and thought that i would try to impliment a similar style/strategy in my weight training class. Today was th efirst day that i tried this circuit style approach. I let the students knwo at the beginning of class what changes were being made. The students got into groups of three or four (groups in which they lifted around the same amount of weight) and would have a specific time to fininsh their lift. The group would rotate about every 13 minute in which they all had to complete their 5x5 sets/reps. On my command the groups would then rotate. This worked out great. At first I did not feel they would be able to handle the high intensity workout but i feel they worked harder than ever and enjoyed it. I am glad i made this change and hope to see more positive outcomes from it.

Triangle Tag

During my elementary physical education class, i tried having the kids play a game called triangle tag. This game is used as a warm up activity to get the students heart rate going. Well, when i read about this strategy and saw a video on how the game took place it worked out great for the teacher in the video. When i tried to impliment this, for some reason went anything but smooth. Some students were complaining that they were not with the group they wanted (their friends). The game involves the students holding hands and and running in a circle both clockwise and counter clockwise to try and protect one of the three people part of the circle from getting tagged. This did not work. Who knew that forth graders would have such a hard trouble holding hands with another classmate. This strategy surly did not work for me. Maybe fourth grade was too old for this particular game!

Just put in some effort!

New teaching strategy is going to be implimented in my weight training and conditioning class. Command style mixed with the recipricol style. Students are taking too long to complete their lifts. There is too much standing around and students are not participating. We will fix this. Students are now going to have designated lifting partners (someone who lifts around the same weight) and students are going to lift in a circuit style with their partners providing feedback and encouragment. They are now going to start at a specific lift, whether it be a core lift or auxilary lift, and they alternate lifting with their partners. They will have approximately 7-8 minutes to complete their 3 sets of x amount of reps. We believe this strategy will help improve their effort and strength while limiting the free time and cutting down the goofing around. Any ideas out their that can help make this transition work smoothly?

weightroom 101!

Thank goodness i had no injuries in weight training today. Sometimes it seems that the student are careless with their actions and feel that no consiquences will occure for their actions. Today i took the approach of the extreme command style strategy of teaching because it seems that students always come in on Mondays as if they have no idea what is going on and what they should be doing. I have to say that it worked better than most Mondays. I think that with the weight training class I am going to continue to use this style because i feel it is most effective when trying to prevent injuries.

Give um a ZERO!

Well, yesterday we had a big discussion on giving students zero's for missing assignments. The argument was to either give them an incomplete or a 50 for a hundred point scale. I feel that if the grades are weighted correctly, giving a student a "0" will not significantly hurt their grade. I also feel it is our jobs as teachers to teach responsibility in that a student should know that if they do not do an assignment or refuse to, they will be given a zero for that assignment. I do believe in allowing a certain time period to make up the assignment but anything past that time period, the student gets a zero. How do you feel about giving students a 50, which is a fail on a 100 point scale, compared to giving them a zero for not turing in assignments.

Safety first!!!!!

Today I almost had a student injure himself in our weight lifting class. I have realized ho wimportant it is to continue to go over safety rules in throughout the year. Even though weightroom safety is addressed often, it is important that ALL of the students have a clear understanding of theseriousness of weight room rules and safety. I am going to spend a short time in the first part of class and review particular techniques and saftey issues pertaining to that particular days lifts. Any other ideas out there?