Reflection #8

For our final class, I really liked looking at the posters that we made at the beginning of our eight days together revisiting the information. It was also nice to see where we were as a class with our confidence to talk about Health and Fitness with our students. When looking back at our charts, I was surprised at how little we focused on how to organize our information and focused more on content. I think that there is nothing wrong with what we want to teach but that we need to have the right balance of content and organization, in order for us to be able to talk about any subject.
Food Journal
The food journals made me realize how little I take care of my body. I have stopped taking care of my body the way that I use to because I always see others more important than taking care of myself. I think it is really hard to honestly say that I will start working out and eating the right things if I am not going to be consistent. The hardest part for me will be to accept another way of life that is less stressed out and relaxed for my well being and for the people I love.

Reflection #7

I taught my micro-lesson and it was a great experience. Although I thought it was a terrible feeling during the lesson. I appreciate that we were recorded while teaching our lesson because we are our hardest critics. I usually do not get to see myself in a presentation and I always assume that I do extremely terrible talking in front of others, but it is not as bad as I think it is. However I also did notice that my ability to think up questions in the spot was difficult for me to do. It might be possible that if I pace myself I might be able to come up with clear thoughts to articulate in class. From the lesson itself I think that I could have done better if we would have integrated one activity into the other like getting to talk about words as we played the video and then writing them on the board as we went along.
We also did some discussion about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, one of the thoughts that I had during the discussion was about our disconnect with cultures other than our own, I think that there is little tolerances and without it we are not able to discuss and solve issues. There is great divide and disparity in how people feel about other cultures and I can see it reflected in how we interact with each other. It makes me scared for how we will present ourselves to families. We truly are afraid of knowing or admitting that we don’t know because the assumption is that we do we know everything. The thought that comes to my mind is that as adults taking college level classes we are given blank maps to fill out and for the most part we would fail to know where anything is. My point is that if we are not able to even pinpoint it on a map how can we even begin to understand others.

Reflection #6

Today the first half of class was micro-teaching and I think that the groups did a great job at handling the space and adjusting to what we had. I think that they did great in the small classroom we were in.
For the second half of class we got to do extremely fun activities with words and looking at objects while also looking and holding a human brain and heart, it was really interactive. I thought it was a great way to get our mind to think about what is going on with the body. Getting our brains to do things and process information is even more enhanced by the experience of getting to actually hold human organs. I imagine that doing something similar with students would be an experience that they would not forget.

Reflection #5

After we had another great microteaching group presented today, we headed over to the dance studio and we did several fun activities. All of the activities we did in class today are great to pair with a lesson. The jump rope rhymes is a great way to add physical activity to a literacy lesson. The germ transmission activity could be a helpful add on to a lesson, a fun way to visually demonstrate how fast germs spread. I had a great time doing these activities and learning about how to incorporate them to our class activities. They are all great to increase physical activity in our students and also help with collaboration. What I may get stuck with though is finding ways to keep everyone engaged if children in a classroom are not able or willing to participate.

Reflection #4

After the microteaching lesson today we talked about several free resources that we can use to assist in teaching a lesson. The one that was most interesting was The Yuk Box which comes with many helpful tools to inform children about poisons in the house and at school. One of the activities in the box was one with candy and medicine inside a bag. The activity can be a very helpful way of having children think about what they may be putting in there body’s. I think I was most surprised by the fact that it was almost impossible to tell what was candy and what was medicine.
I think it was really nice to be reminded that there are many free resources that can help in teaching a lesson to a class.

Reflection #3

In the discussion about abuse the first concept that stood out to me was the part of “protecting the child first” and the concern for the family should come second. I really struggled with this because like a classmate suggested if we are trying to build community what makes sense is to include parents. However after thinking a bit I concluded that building community should be a foundation, that we have already established and we should feel confident that reporting will ultimately benefit the child. I realized that there could be great benefit for intervention in a struggling home. In any of the areas of abuse report will help a child be in a safe environment that does not interrupt learning and helps a child be healthy and happy. For families of different cultures intervention may help those who are struggling to find better ways to deal with a hard situation. I also struggled with this idea because it almost seemed like other cultures have to comply no matter what, yet having a set of standards may be good to have if utilized correctly. I had a hard time putting my own cultural beliefs aside and my own experiences as a child with social workers instead I tried to focus on how the intervention might have helped my family and how this will help children.

Reflection #2

Today we were given several parts of a lesson and we were asked to organize the parts in the order that made sense to us. After we finished arranging parts we discussed why we made the choices we did for our lesson. It was helpful to know that we should not be so concerned about the order in which we present information as long as we have a good reason to do it. As part of class we also simulated a relay race and afterwards it was nice to debrief and use the same activity to write up a lesson plan. After working in small groups and constructing our own relay race lesson plan, coming back together and walking through the correct ways to write a lesson plan, made the information easier to grasp. After this introduction I understand a little better the standards and the learning objectives. I have discovered that it will be something I will get better at doing with time and practice; I will just have to do it.