Tuesday, October 21, 2008

A third time around....


For this lab I observed Student A and Student B. Student A is a six year old boy who is in the first grade. Student B is a five year old girl who is in kindergarten. I watched them go through a creative obstacle course where we watched them perform various skills. We watched them leap, horizontal jump, and slide. Student B is very advanced for her age; she is at a mature level for leap and was also very good at sliding. The problem she has is with her jumps. She never extended her arms forcefully forward and upward, reaching full extension above the head. She also never had flexion of both arms and knees with arms extended behind the body. Student A was not as advanced as Student B. He is good at sliding but has trouble with leaping and jumping. When he leaped he couldn’t take off on one foot and land on the other, also his didn’t have a forward reach with arm opposite of lead foot. When he jumped he didn’t bring his arms downward during landing. He also didn’t extend arms forcefully forward and upward, reaching full extension above the head. He didn’t show flexion of both arms and knees with arms extended behind the body. For this lab I used a couple different teaching strategies. One of them was to get down on one knee where I was at eye level with the students. This was very effective because we had eye contact so when I was explaining what we were doing they were much more attentive. Here the children know you are sincere and they listen better. I also think you the teacher are a lot less intimidating. Here I feel you can really get through to your students.

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