This is a picture of the feedback letter we got from Mrs. Cress.

My PEH 220 class recently took a trip to Shannon Johnson, in order to teach Mrs. Cress’s fourth grade math class. I really enjoyed the opportunity to be inside the classroom with the children. I could feel so much energy and excitement from the students, simply because they had guest who were coming in to teach their classroom for the day. As we introduced that we would be incorporating movement into the lesson, I could also see how pleased the students became. This just goes to prove one of the main points of this class, and show that children really learn better and do become more enthused when movement and activities are integrated into the classroom.

I also really felt like I learned an immense amount about what it is like to be a teacher. As far as having the opportunity to make out lesson plans and then actually being able to go into a classroom and demonstrate them to a class was wonderful.

I also left with a feeling of true impact on both the students and Mrs. Cress. I can remember when I was in elementary school. The concept of having visitors come in and teach the class was absolutely fantastic for me then, and actually still is today. As a matter of fact, I can still remember several times throughout my educational career when a visitor came into my classroom and really left an impact on me as a person and me as a learner. It is my hope that I have had a similar impact on the students I had the opportunity to teach last Thursday, and they will be able to hold memories of our lesson together throughout their lifetime, as I well do with this memory. After all, this was not simply me attempting to teach them a lesson about balancing equations, but I was also learning about becoming a teacher in order to better prepare myself for the future.

I also found that we got really great feedback from Mrs. Cress. She actually reported that we also taught her a lesson about how important it is to incorporate more movement and activity into the classroom. She also stated that she noticed how excited most of the students became when we announced that we needed them to stand up, and this really was a moment that made her realize that she needed to incorporate more movement into her own lessons. She admitted that it really is rather time consuming and even a little tough to bring activities into the class, given that it is just so much easier for a teacher to overlook it and just not worry about incorporating such into their lessons. However, she said that she was going to try and work around that and figure out a way to bring more movement into her classroom, because she saw what a wonderful impact it made on her students learning that day.

I would put this experience in the professional development section. As I have stated before, I feel that it is wonderful to have the opportunity to get to go into a classroom to observe. However, I believe that it is even better when you are actually given the opportunity to teach. I had such a wonderful time doing this, and I feel as if it really has helped me to become more developed in my aspirations to become a teacher. Any type of experience you can get that brings you closer to the profession you would like to be in really does help to expand on your knowledge of that subject. I believe that there is no better type of development than actually having the opportunity to experience something for yourself.

This is Jessi, practicing her juggling skills, just as
we did on our trip to KAHPERD.

On October 15, my PEH 220 class took a field trip to the KAHPERD Convention in Louisville. I feel that this experience really impacts me as an aspiring teacher. There was so much information presented to me there that I had always been somewhat familiar with, but never really realized how much it could impact the lives of my future students. Kids face so much these days, with the fact that childhood obesity rates are constantly rising, expectations from schools are elevating, and childhood depression is becoming an epidemic in today’s society, how do we really expect our children to be able to cope with everything? However, there is a treatment. Exercise and movement can help children to deal with all of the above factors All we need to do is incorporate this idealistic standard of living into their everyday lives.

In schools today, so much is based on state tests. It is expected that children sit down all the time and constantly study, in order for the teachers to have enough time to go over everything that will appear on these tests. However, I found the results of the school that she talked about to be amazing. After using the program standards of Fit 4 Learning, the test scores improved dramatically with the approach. Not only do children reap the benefits of this program through kinesthetic learning, but using the exercise you get through this will also help with bringing children’s weight down and help with then deal better with stress, inevitably bringing childhood depression to a standstill. Going to the convention made me really realize that there are so many positive reasons to integrate movement into the lives of our children.

Upon becoming a teacher I definitely plan to find ways to bring movement into the classroom, given all of the wonderful effects it will have on my students. I really enjoyed all of the games and activities we participated in during our time in Louisville. I also noticed the things the teachers on the videos she showed us were doing and I can understand how these activities can help children with learning. Another good thing about this is that you can apply this type of method to almost any subject, whether it is math, social studies or phonics. All you really have to do is come up with a song that will help the children remember how to do something, and then apply movements and it is really easy to remember. As a teacher, I absolutely want to include this type of learning in my classroom and I am really glad to have gotten to have this experience. I feel as if it will help me to be a better and more effective teacher in the future.

I would place this in the Elements of Authentic Learning section. This was a field trip that I will never forget. The information I learned there will constantly be with me as I continue to build my future in teaching children. I feel that the experiences that I had through going on this trip affected me in such a way because there was so much activity used to present the information given, it wasn’t just a big lecture, backed up by a PowerPoint, but the presenter actually took the time and used the energy it took to get up and show us how activity could be used in schools.

Peer Teaching

This is Valerie, passing out materials for her peer teaching assignment in PEH 220.

On November 13, we were assigned to do a peer teaching in my PEH 220 class, I feel that this was a wonderful learning opportunity. It gave us a chance to write out a lesson plan and then implement that plan in real life. This run through of our lesson plan was to give us a better understanding of how things could go when we travel to Shannon Johnson to teach this same lesson to a fourth grade classroom. This really was a wonderful way to check to make sure all our activities made since and got our point across about the connection between balancing objects and balancing equations.

I realized how hard it is to teach your peers through this experience. This is especially true when you are asking them to act like younger children. I have found that a lot of times this will result in them asking silly questions that they feel would be typical of a younger child, but it really just feels like they are trying to be smart or make you work harder. It is also hard to adjust the time a lesson plan will take between an actual fourth grade class and our class, pretending to be fourth graders. For example, we did not really have enough math problems prepared and we needed to make up more ways to balance when teaching our classmates. However, when we go into the schools, I feel like what we already had planned and written out will be plenty because it will take them longer to balance themselves and figure out the problems we are going to ask them about.

Overall, this was a fantastic and educational experience. It was wonderful to get to practice our lesson plans with the classroom. I would put this under the Community of Learning label because I feel that our class really did work as a community that day. We trusted each other enough to practice our lesson plans on each other and then give out constructive feedback. It was important that we trust this advise and used it to better our lesson plans, in order to run more smoothly when we travel to Shannon Johnson to teach.

Berea Community Classroom Expirience

This is a picture of my PEH 220 class on our field trip to Berea Community School.

On October 2, 2008 I took a trip with my PEH 220 course to Berea Community School. It was a really great experience to be able to go into the class room and see real students and teachers using movement in order to create a better learning environment. This experience has really helped me to tie the things we had previously talked about in class in with a real classroom situation, given that this class is all about bringing more movement and activity into the classroom. We had been going over several developing educational topics in this class, for example the significance of brain dance or juggling to improve learning and even reading skills, but before actually seeing the teacher use things like brain gym and the lazy eight exercises in her classroom, I really wasn’t sure how these concepts would work out with a classroom full of twenty children at the age of seven. However, contrary to my prior belief that the students would get a little out of hand and just get a bit too excited, I was able to see how wonderfully doing these exercises together in the classroom works. Not only that, but it was great to see how much the children loved doing it.

From this classroom experience, I also took away a couple of things I would like to use in my own classroom someday. For example, I really enjoyed the fact that the children had different stations that they got to participate in, all of which incorporated a fun way to practice literacy and spelling. I also thought the shower curtain game they played in the class was a really fun way to go about learning. With this activity, you lay out a shower curtain and place spelling words all over it. Then the child takes a small bean bag and throws it onto one of the words. Then the child gets to pick that word up and read what it says. I also really liked that it would be easy to change this up in order to encompass other subject matter. For example, you could use math problems rather than spelling words. Over all I really thought this was a wonderful experience. It’s really great to get a better understanding of being inside the classroom with children of that age and seeing the things we have discussed in class put to use in a learning environment.

I would put this experience into the professional development category. I believe that it is very important to use opportunities such as this to get the feeling of what it is truly like to be inside an elementary school classroom. During our college years, I believe it is a vital time to take any chance we get to travel to different classrooms and have as much experience with children as we possibly can. After all, this does give us a glimpse into our own future as teachers, plus it gives us the chance to learn a few tricks for the future from the professionals.

Using games to become more familiar and comfortable with a subject

Here, the children are playing "The Shower Curtain Game". This is used as a wonderful way to practice reading.
This is were a shower curtain is laid down on the floor and spelling words are spread all over it. Each student gets to take a turn by tossing a bean bag onto one of the words, then picking it up and reading it. It is used as a way to practice reading the spelling words in a fun way, rather than simply writing them out on paper over and over again. It is important to encorporate all different types of learning into the classroom. All students do not learn in the same way, therefore, in best interest of the students it is essential to use as many ways of learning as possible.
I learned from watching the students do this that it is vital to establish new and exciting ways of learning in the classroom. This is especially true whenever you have younger children in the class who may get bored or easily unfocused when doing the same things over and over again. To develop a true understanding of something can not be done only through lecture and instruction, but there must be expirinece involved in the subject, in order to be able to comprehend it to the best of our abilities.
I feel this goes under the elements of authentic learning section because the teacher of the classroom must understand this idea, givent that she was able to come up with such a wonderful new way to help her students practice reading.

Learning through expirience and communication with others

Here our class is working together in order to solve a problem posed by the teacher. We were all given random objects and asked to work with eachother to figure out what object should go with the other based on the form or the color of the object.

This was a rather complicated task. It took the compleate cooperation and imput of everyone in the class in order to be able to come up with the correct answer to the puzzle. It was also importatnt o make sure that everyone in the class agreed that each thing had been paired with it's companion correctly. We had to agree on whether we should pair it with something of its same color or it's same form, in order to come out with the right answer at the end, so everything would end up in the right pair. However, finally we were able to beat the odds and came up with the correct answer to the problem.

The most important thing that I learned here is that communication is key. As I stated before, it took everyone in the class room's input to be able to come up with the right answer. With out communication between eachother, we would have never been able to figure the problem out. The best way to develop a good sence of communication is to work on the community of inquiry in the classroom. This is the idea that everyone is comfortable sharing ideas and opinions with eachother, and having the assurance that they are perfectly safe in doing this.

Using technology to influence learning

Here, technology is being used in order to make learning a more interesting process for the students. As a matter of fact, the teachers have created a game, using questions from the chapter in the book that the class is reading out of.
Using technology in the classroom creates the oppertunity to infuse learning about any and most all types of subject matter with learning about the use technology. It aslo may create a much more interesting or fun way to learn. For example, here we were playing a game that questioned us about the chapter we were reading about that week. However, since we are answering questions off the computer screen and have made it more like a game, it does not seem as bad as if our teachers had handed us a two page paper with the same exact questions on it. And the best part is that our teachers can still tell if we understand the subject matter, given the fact that they can observe us in our groups and see who is comtributing. Therefore, the same type of effect is given for the teacher, but it doesnt seem like busy work for the students.
While doing this activity, I actually learned a lot about the chapter that I did not know or understand before. Because we took the time to discuss and go over almost every question, I felt that I had a much better understanding coming out of class that day. Using technology also helped me to remember better what was discussed in class that day, due to the fact that it is so much easier to remember an expirience that you have went through, rather than dry facts you have read out of a book. As a matter of fact, it may be hard to remember that type of material just a few minutes after finishing it.
This is in here in order to show all the ways using technology in the classroom is beneficial to the students. Using technology in todays classroom is essential in order to put your students at the best advantage possible.