A Semester of Lab Assisting!!

This semester I was a lab assistant for PED 201, Motor Development. As a lab assistant I help the students plan their labs and give them feedback on what they plan for their lessons. Also, during labs I am there to help students set up or provide assistance when they are having problems. In the beginning, the 201 students seemed to be a little shy and nervous. However, as the semester progressed the students got more comfortable with their teaching skills. It was amazing watching each student really find their own teaching style and work to perfect it. This experience was a learning experience for me. I was there to help the 201 students but I believe I learned a lot from watching them teach. It was also great to see how all of the students interacted with the children. Interacting with the children helped the students really developed their skills. I saw a lot of students displaying great enthusiastic during lab. That is one of the ideas that I really stressed to them. In my opinion, enthusiasm is essential to bring with you on your way to teach a lesson. A great lesson plan can turn into a disaster if the teacher lacks enthusiasm for what they are teaching. I also saw the students improve upon projecting their voices. During the first couple of labs the students did not speak loud enough. It takes a bit of time to get comfortable using your voice at that volume but after just a couple of week they seemed to get it down. A piece of advice I gave from my experiences in 201 and 255 was you cannot speak to loud when you’re teaching. I was also very impressed with was how the students planned their lessons. The second half of the semester; the student’s lesson plans were great. Many students came dressed up to go to along with the theme of the lab, and their games were carefully planned to go along with the theme as well. Overall, I am very proud of the improvements made by the 201 students this semester! Lab assisting has been a great experience for me and I look forward to next semester.

Eat Right!!!

I really enjoyed playing Lunch Crunch and Pyramid Pile up. These are two great games that really help to teach children about the importance of proper nutrition. In the game Lunch Crunch the objective is to give the students two servings of either vegetables or fruits before they get to the lunch lady.
The game gives you a selection of foods that keep shuffling as you hand food out to the children. To shuffle the food around more you can take the unhealthy foods and put them into the refrigerator, which gives you more points. If you let a student reach the lunch lady without two servings of fruits and vegetables you lose points. One of the things I really like about this game is the goal is to give the students a healthy lunch. This teaches the children who play this game that the best lunch is a healthy lunch. Also, I like how there is a pretty wide range of foods that you have to choose from. The larger selection of foods makes the game more lifelike and entertaining. Pyramid Pile up is another great game. In this game the objective is to fill up the food pyramid with the correct servings per category before the chompies fall on your pyramid and get to the bottom.
Once the chompies reach the bottom of the pyramid they knock the entire pyramid down. This game gets progressively harder as you more up through the levels. More and more food options and chompies can make it quite challenging. I also like this game because of what it is teaching children about nutrition.
The pyramid has one spot for every serving of that particular food group that is recommended to consume in one day. For example the pyramid has four spots for fruits because it is recommended that a person should eat four servings of fruit per day. After playing this game you just remember how many spots there are for each food group. This is very important information for young children to be learning, especially with obesity as high as it is. I am very happy with the lessons being taught be theses two games and I wish more games could have lessons behind them as important as nutrition.

255 Final Part 1C

What do your impressions of using Daily Burn? Do you currently use another form of online exercise and nutrition tracker? If so what is it and which features do you like better? If not, why not and will you consider staying apart of our Rockstar Group? Be sure to include your screen shots (at least 3) that you took and cropped.

I am very impressed after just a short period of time using the daily burn. I really like how you can look up pretty much any type of food. It gets very specific with the food options, it goes right down to the brand name. I am very happy that you can look up different exercises. This is a key characteristic for a fitness tracker type website because it seems like everyone today is following a different routine with different exercises. Another thing that I really like is there are training plans to accommodate people with different goals. I have actually never used an online fitness tracker before. I keep a fitness log to help me track my progress. I would definitely consider staying apart of the Rockstar Group. The Daily burn is a very user friendly program and I really like how it is setup.



How would you use this website to accomplish our Recommended Regent’s Level for LS #1B? What modifications would you use to establish a group or individual’s goals?

This website would be great for our students to use to accomplish New York State Learning Standard 1B. This program helps guide you along the process of making a fitness plan. I really like it because it has videos that show the exercises. This is vital because it shows the students the correct form of an exercise that they might not have seen before. The students can actually track their progress, which will motivate them to work harder at getting into better shape. One modification I would make to establish a group goal would adapt the challenge to go along with the goal of the group. If this was just for an individual than you would set it up more for what their personal goals are.






What electronic tool could you see as being useful for capturing data and reporting for the Recommended Regent’s Level for LS #1A? Describe how this tool might work in a High School Setting. If you plan to use Excel, or Google Forms, be sure to include a sample that can tried out online.

I would say that heart rate monitors would be very useful to capture data for meeting New York State Learning Standard 1A. The data from each watch/monitor can be uploaded or sent directly to a handheld or laptop. This data can be put together to make reports that include graphs to show how each student is performing. Also, just by having the heart rate monitors on the students will be motivated to participate in PE. The heart rate monitors are very easy to put on and take off so the teacher doesn’t really loose much time from their lesson.

My Part 1B

Where is the web-site from? Where in the world? Which country? What city and state/province is the story from?

This web-site is from CBC, which is the Canadian broadcasting company in Canada. The story takes place in the province of Saskatoon. This story also talks about a High School in Chicago that also is using a fitness plan to improve its student’s academic performance.

What do you think about this news piece....interesting...why or why not?

I think that this news piece is very interesting. I was very surprised by how much all the students improved. For example, Bernie’s comprehension improved 400% and his reading improved 25%. These are amazing results in such a short period of time. Another thing that really helps support that this works is that the entire class improved one letter grade. It is really hard to dispute a program with such strong evidence. It’s amazing to me that programs like these are proven to work, but when a school is looking to make budget cuts the physical education program is one of the first areas they look at. After watching this it made me think back to when I was in high school I did better in school when I was in a sports season. I really hope that more and more schools start adopting programs like these.



Why don’t we hear anything about the PE teacher being involved with City Park Collegiate experiment? How will you ensure that your PE program will be a benefit to the students and faculty of your school?

It is sad to say but the after watching the video it was very clear that they do not have a strong physical education program. The video showed many students in PE just standing around not doing anything. This tells me that the physical education teachers do not care whether the students participate or not. The school needs to get a teacher with some passion and enthusiasm for physical education. My physical education will benefit the students at my school because it will always be an energetic and interesting environment. Throughout the school year I will have new and fun units that will grab the student’s attention. The faculty will benefit from this program because after my PE class the students will be relaxed and ready to concentrate. I feel embarrassed for the PE teacher at this school because after just a few seconds of seeing their class I could tell they do not love what they do.

What are were the main outcomes/benefits of the program? Were you surprised from their findings? Are these outcomes similar to our New York State PE Standards? Explain your answer by giving details and examples, while comparing and contrasting.

The main results from this program were very positive. The students were all improving in reading and writing comprehension and math. Bernie, who was one student who was having a lot of behavioral problems as well as academic problems, improved his comprehension 400%. Also behavioral problems were decreasing dramatically. One student found that running on the treadmill helped him control his anger and it helped him focus in class. The entire class averaged about a one letter grade improvement. It was amazing to see that twenty minutes on a treadmill before class can really change a persons entire outlook on school. The attendance rate increased as well. The students actually wanted to come to school just so that they could use the treadmills. With more students being in school everyday they were able to cover more material in the classrooms. This program is definitely similar to our New York State Learning Standards. The students are actually increasing their personal health twenty minutes before class, which related to NYS LS 1A. Also, the students are given options as far as what type of exercises they are going to do, which is similar to NYS LS 1B, creating a fitness plan. The teacher is the one responsibly for providing a safe and healthy environment, which she is doing. She is going above and beyond with this program because it creates an even healthier environment. The only NYS LS that is not really met in this story is number 3. The students are not given any other options of places that they can go to workout. Now maybe the story just didn’t cover that information and the teacher did provide the students with that type of information but we can’t be sure.

What is BDNF and what does it have to do with PE and learning? How do you get BDNF or other associated goodies? What are the names of two of the “key” books and their authors that currently outline the benefits of exercise and learning/academics? At least one is mentioned in the news piece.

BDNF is a neurochemical that helps the brain grow. BDNF also improves you take information and remember it. This has to do with PE and learning because exercise increases the amount of this particular chemical. However, exercising is not the only way to increase BDNF. BDNF can be increased by reducing the amount of calories you eat in a day. Two books that discuss BDNF are “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain” by John J. Ratey and “Natures Ritalin for the Marathon Mind” by Stephen C. Putnam.