Final Days of Student Teaching

Tomorrow, December 8 is my final day of student teaching. I have had a wonderful experience at Bothwell and working with David L'Huillier and getting to know other staff as well. Many thanks go out to all the teachers I grew to know and all the students who helped me understand what it truly means to be a teacher. I learned a ton from this experience and will hold it dearly as I set out to find my own home in a School. Last week I gave my students an evaluation form to fill out on my teaching. Wow, what an ego boost. The students were thoughtful and insightful and I appreciate their honest comments. I will miss them all, and wish them good luck in the rest of this year and their numerous years to come.

Inventory Checklist/Parent Teacher Conferences

Yesterday, Dave and I took a complete inventory of all the PE equipment using my NMU laptop. Today Parent Teacher conferences continue for another 6 hours. The students had a half day today and will tomorrow as well. Because the gym is taken over by tables and chairs for the conferences we have the students on the Girls Sports deck playing double ping pong. Next week is my last full week of teaching. I am completely done on December 8. My how the time has flown bye.....

New 6th and 7th Grade Students

The end of the marking period was last Friday for the 6th and 7th grade students. I was sad to see these students leave, who were wonderful. But, I was excited for the opportunity to work with a new group of students. Thus far the new students have kept up with the reputation the other group with being respectful and attentive. We finished giving them their lockers today and have started our Ping Pong Unit.

Ready Set...Ping Pong!

This week began our unit on Ping Pong. The first day was spent instructing the students on the rules and the proper ways to hit the ping pong ball. Today was our second day of Ping Pong and I created a Round Robin Singles tournament for each class. Each game of the tournament is five minutes long. I created the tournament for the students electronically using a tournament creator program. I have all the students names and which tables their matches are on nicely printed for all to see.

Spooky Halloween

On Friday, students dressed up for Halloween. We played Toplet in PE class which is a more advanced version of Dodgeball. The students enjoyed the silly day of wearing their creative costumes. The last two hours of the day I spent helping at the 8th grade Halloween Bash Assembly.

Badminton Finals/The President's Challenge

This week, we ranked all the 8th grade badminton teams according to their record from last week. There were three groups. Group A was the 1st-4th place teams. Group B was the 5th-8th place teams and lastly was Group C with the remainder of the teams. With the 7th and 6th graders we had them performing the 1 minute sit-ups test, sit and reach test, shuttle run and the push ups test.

Hope College Alumni Soccer Match

On Saturday I went to Hope College for a reunion soccer match on the Colleges brand new Soccer Stadium. There were about 24 Alumni soccer players who came. We played on the turf field and then had a barbecue following. It was a great day to see my former teammates and friends at Hope. I look forward to next years reunion.

Day w/Special Education Students in Owosso MI

On friday I went to school with my mom who has been teaching for the past 40 years! She is a Special Education Teacher in Owosso. She works with 18-26 year old students on life skills. She helps them find their own apartments, budget accounts and find jobs. Friday was a choice day for her students. I offered to teach basketball and soccer. I had 11 students playing basketball with me in the morning. In the afternoon we took 6 students to the park to play soccer. It was a great experience and the students were eager to learn and were very interested in my College Soccer career at Hope College.

NMU Photo Shoot

Jason Jones a professional photographer hired by NMU came and took those photos of me working with some 5th graders during a Soccer Lesson.

Badminton

This week we are playing Badminton with 6th-8th graders. Yesterday we worked on the serve and today we worked on forehand and backhand strokes. We play by the official rules of Badminton and divide the student so they can play doubles. Most of the students are understanding the rules but some need a bit more reiteration. Badminton is one of my favorite yard games. It's quite easy to pick up and a lot fun to play.

Final Cross Country Meet 10-13-10

Our final Cross Country Meet was held yesterday at the Fit Strip located right in Marquette. The Fit strip is a wonderful trail through some woods on the outskirts of town. Along the trail there are fitness stations with diagrams of the activity at each station. The race for our students was the longest distance this year or 1.75 miles. The kids ran their hearts out and it was wonderful to see the progress we made with our brief but wonderful season.

Professional Development Day 10-8-10

On Friday there were no classes for the students. The teachers although had to come in for a Professional Development day. Throughout the school year there are a certain amount of hours that have to be spent for professional development. We spent the day discussing issues with students and schedule conflicts and what resolutions we thought would work best. The social studies department was cleaning out their closet of books and I was fortunate enough to be able to obtain some great US History books for my own personal library. I even got a really nifty globe :). After school I headed to the the NMU soccer practice field and played with some friends in the warm 70 degree afternoon!

Disc Golf Lesson/Girls Basketball Game

Today was my final day working with Mrs. McKinley's class. Bothwell is putting in a new Disc Golf course behind the school. The course will have 4 holes to begin, hopefully adding 5 more in the future to make a 9 hole course. For today, I used our PE portable nets for the course and set up 8 holes behind the school. I instructed the students on how to throw the Frisbee and the rules of play. I then broke them into pairs and assigned them a hole to begin with. The pairs had their own score card and a marker to keep track of how many throws it took them to make it into the net. The students were really excited to play and it was a sunny warm fall afternoon. I was excited to be able to teach the students how to play the game since their will soon be a course in their "backyard" so to say. Before we began I asked the class of 28 students if any of them had ever played and only 2 students raised their hands.

This evening I spent my time working the clock at the 7th and 8th grade Girls Basketball games. I'm happy to report that both teams played really well and I saw some great sportsmanship from both Bothwell and the visiting Negaunee teams. I have been really impressed with the caliber of play from the 8th grade squad. They are an extremely talented group of young athletes. Their court awareness and tenacity on defense bring them to a higher level of play then most middle school teams can handle. They are really fun to watch and I am glad I can help out by working the clock.

Sideline Soccer w/5th Grade

Today, the frost advisory kept us indoors for 1st hour with the 5th graders. I had the students play sideline soccer so everyone was actively participating in the game but the field was not to crowded because two of the teams lined up on the sideline. The sideline teams could pass the ball to either of the teams that were playing on the field. I also would designate the sidelines to do jumping jacks or high knees. This worked really well and the students had a lot of fun :)

Nature Hike with Mrs. McKinley's Class

Today for Mrs. McKinley's class I took the students on a hike. I took them on the beautiful trail right behind the School. Almost all of the students didn't even know there was a trail there! The leaves are in full color and the students really enjoyed the winding trail through the woods. I identified some trees with the students and which trees certain leaves belonged to. We ended our hike on a bridge that looked out at Marquette Mountain Ski Hill. I talked to the students about what sorts of activities they could do at the mountain in winter and also in the summer/fall. There are a ton of great trails that you can hike, bike or run on. It was a perfect fall day.

Bothwell Cross Country Home Meet

I am helping Coach the Bothwell Cross Country team which is 5th-8th grade and has nearly 70 students! Our first home meet was today. Superior Timing offered their services for using electronic chip timing for the meet. Most of the students had never ran a race which used this fancy new technology. The students received their own number bib which had their name and school listed on the front. The course was a 1.5 mile loop around the school and through some single track trails in the woods. Everyone at the meet ran their hardest and were grateful to get official race results from Superior Timing. Our next meet is next Wednesday and will be hosted by Father Marquette.

4th Hour Alternative Exercises

For the next two weeks I will be conducting an Alternative exercise lesson with Mrs. Mckinley's class. I have given up my prep hour to work with her students on different exercises. On Tuesday I taught the students how to use a jump rope and to increase their cardiovascular health by performing different skills with the rope. At the end of the lesson I had the students jump rope for 1 minute, then they took their pulse for 30 seconds. When they got back to their classroom they wrote down their number on a piece of paper and multiplied it by 2 to get their heart rate. The students were wonderful for me and they enjoyed the more challenging jump rope activities that I introduced to them. My next day working with them will be this friday. I am undecided on what activity I will do with them. Any suggestions? :)

Half-Marathon/5k Bothwell students

On Saturday I competed in my 2nd Half-Marathon. The Lake Superior Shore Run was a 13.1 mile course over some technical terrain with some steep climbs on rock. I finished 3rd in my age group and 10th overall with a time of 2:02 :) I won a jar of Keewenaw Raspberry Jam. There was also a 5k race that a number of Bothwell students ran. It was a wonderful fall morning and it was great to see some of my students braving the brisk fall air with huge smiles on their faces. I was very happy with my performance and look forward to beating my time next year :)

Dribbling/Passing/shooting

With the remainder of the week I worked with the students on their dribbling, passing and shooting skills. I instructed them on the proper way to make contact with the soccer ball while they were passing and shooting. Once the students were comfortable dribbling the soccer ball around the gym using both the inside and outside of both feet I taught them some more advanced moves to get away from defenders. I showed them the rollover, scissors, step over, toe stop and the spin move. The students responded really well to the advanced moves. I was happy to see some of the students using the moves when we played at the end of the hour.

Soccer

For the next 2 weeks we will be working on soccer skills with the 5-8th graders. For our first day we focused on dribbling skills and some juggling. I look forward to teaching the students some of my knowledge of the game.

Friday On My Own

On friday Dave L'Hullier had a football game down in Cheboygen so he was not at school. I took the helm and lead all 6 periods of PE by myself. The students were for the most part well behaved until the last two hours of the day with the 8th graders. I felt extremely comfortable and truly enjoyed my first "real" day of teaching :)

My first week of Student teaching at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette MI has been fun, exhausting, and thus far a wonderful experience :)

Half-Marathon successfully completed with a time of 2:11. I finished 2nd in my age group and won a block of cheese..yum :) This is the last week of classes and I am busy finishing papers, and lesson plan assignments.

The last two weeks of classes are a hectic time for everyone. Crunch time begins for most people. I have been working hard the past few weeks to get my projects, papers and lesson plans completed. This weekend I will be headed to Wisconsin to run in my first half-marathon! I am excited and nervous. It will be a good break from school work. I look forward to seeing how all my hard work the past few months pays off in the race. Wish me Luck!

I have just received my student teaching placement at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette MI. I am excited to have Dave L'Huilier as my mentoring teacher. Last year I observed at Bothwell for one of my education classes and I am excited to become part of the Bothwell teaching team.

This week I have been teaching at Father Marquette Middle School. Tuesday I began with teaching jump rope skills. The students responded really well to the activities. I had a great time working with them. Thursday we will continue with jump rope skills as the students will be creating their own routine and teaching it to their classmates.

Over spring break I went to Baraga Middle School and High School. I observed both Physical Education and History classes. It was interesting seeing how the teacher interacted with the students in both PE and History.

During Spring Break I went to Baraga to observe the History/Physical Education teacher there. I spent two days there and learned a lot from the teacher and the students there. It was a great experience.

I was able to observe at Father Marquette on Wednesday. I got to see 5th, 6th and 8th grade students. The 5th graders and 8th graders were playing softball in the gym. the 6th graders were tackling volleyball. The most exciting thing that happened that day for the students was when the bat broke and went flying across the gym. As a PE teacher you need to be ready for anything as this instance clearly showed. I will be back next Wednesday and will hopefully get a chance to see the 7th graders.

Wednesday I will be observing at Father Marquette Middle School. I will be able to see 5th, 6th and 7th grade students. I plan on obeserving there every Wednesday from now on.

I will start observing at Father Marquette Middle School with Christy Provost the Physical Education teacher later this week. Christy has a student teacher working with her right now so that will be interesting to see. I am excited to get to know the class before I dive into teaching them a lesson.

There are still no set dates to begin observation hours at Father Marquette. Dates for actual teaching at Father Marquette will be sometime in late March. In my Methods of Social Studies class I have also been assigned observation hours which must total 15 hours. I am looking forward to this because I have no experience observing History classes, which is my minor. I get to choose where I want to observe so if anyone has any suggestions let me know! thanks.

Awaiting Observation Schedule

I will be observing the Physical Education class at Father Marquette Middle school in the coming weeks. I have done some middle school observation in the past at Bothwell, and I am looking forward to meeting and working with the Father Marquette teacher. I think the middle school age student is an essential age group for basic skill instruction and proficiency. By High School students should have their fundamental motor skills and sport specific skills refined.