Day 4 and 5

Thursday 21/7,

      Today I taught my first lesson of lacrosse which went over very well with the students. This is an interesting class, the majority of the students are international and I was told that they continue to get new students regularly. We worked on the fundamentals after first talking about some of the lacrosse basics; we went through picking up ground balls, passing, and catching. I was impressed at the majority of the class who seemed to pick up these skills quickly. I also enjoyed the fact that the students were interested and engaged throughout the lesson making it tremendously easier to teach.
       This was a class from a different teacher, not my host teacher, and he said he would like for me to take this class regularly from now on, which is something I am more than willing to do. The equipment they have for lacrosse is minimal so I will have to work with what I have to put together engaging lessons for the students. He said they will be ordering lacrosse balls, we used tennis balls, and they don't have goals, so we will have to find something else to use when it comes time to being shooting. The sticks they have are the typical metal shaft with a plastic head. Overall this was a great lesson and I enjoyed teaching it as the students enjoyed themselves as well.
        My next class today was with my Year 8 students and we were supposed to be outside, but out of 26 students only two had remembered to bring their hats, so we went into the classroom instead. This was just the start to a terrible class. My host teacher took control of this lesson, and had the students copy notes from a powerpoint presentation from a different unit but with ideas that relate to personal well being. The students were miserable throughout the lesson, a few students had to be removed from the class and many others were continually obnoxious. I sat in the class observing the students and my teacher, and I felt almost disgusted at how rude and obnoxious these students were acting, they seemed not to care about anything but acting out and getting attention. I am glad that I will not have to teach these students on Monday due to the Athletics Carnival, and I know that I will have to work on a lesson that will keep the students engaged, while keeping the class under control. I plan on being very firm from the beginning next time I teach this class so the students get the idea that this behavior shown today will not be accepted.

Friday 22/7,

Today I taught Gridiron (American Football). I taught this lesson to my other Year 8 class, not the disruptive one from the day before. I was pleased with house this lesson went, we started by talking about the correct way to throw and catch a football, then I had the students in groups of three practice just that. I walked around through the students giving feedback to each one on ways to improve their fundamentals. After providing feedback I noticed that the majority of the students improved greatly, which I was pleased to see. I then picked three of the better throwers to be Quarterbacks for my next activity. I had three different lines and introduced two routes, the button hook and post. The students spent a lot of time in this activity and I had to stop a few times to correct students routes as a whole, but for the most part students were on task which was good. While this activity was going I handed out jerseys to half of the students and then brought the class in to talk about our next activity, Ultimate Football. Most of the students had played Ultimate Frisbee previously so they had some understanding of the rules which helped. So after explaining all of the rules for the game I had the students begin playing, and they really enjoyed this game and didn't want to stop when we were out of time. This was a great lesson and I felt good about how the students continually improved and how they stayed engaged for the most part throughout the lesson.