Thursday, April 12, 2012

Field Experience Day 12

FIELD EXPERIENCE DAY TWELVE March 30th 2012
St. Marys School - 2nd grade

TOPIC: Skill Themes and Student Abilities

This day was all about the skill theme transfer of weight. My partner and I were interested in seeing where the class was at for a specific transfer of weight skill the cartwheel. Our host teacher had mentioned that this class was particularly struggling in this area, mainly the male students. He really wanted us to see where they were in order for us to create an effective lesson plan to help them improve. We are in the gymnastics unit and have different stations set up. With what equipment the school has, it actually was not to bad. There were many mats, a balance beam, ropes to climb, and an incline mat as well. Rob and I decided to create a pre-assessment tool to study the students skill theme abilities on the cartwheel. We took one station, the blue mat, and the host teacher rotated the students throughout the other stations. Once a group of 5 came over, we had them perform cartwheels (or attempt to) down the large blue mat while we used our pre-assessment checklist with some critical elements on the side. I noticed that while there were a couple of girls who were proficient in this skill, most others had difficulty in all areas while performing. Watched the students try to transfer weight from their feet to their hands, some seemed fearful of trusting their own strength and really giving it a try. The critical elements we based our assessment on are: lunge, strong arms, legs above hips, and foot-foot. The students that could not transfer weight by performing a cartwheel commonly struggled in all 4 areas rather than just a specific one. Having strong arms (being locked out) and being able to get their legs above the hips were the two areas that all the students who could not perform the skill struggled in. Out of the class 10 students had difficulty with the skill, and 7 students were able to perform the cartwheel at a utilization level. This assessment truly helped in planning out which direction to take the students in to ensure learning occurs. Click HERE if you want to see the pre-assessment results.

Check out some pictures below of the gym we assessed in!!



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