November 4

Today we taught our micro-lesson plan in class today; mine was on alcohol and drugs and the effects it has on your body.  I think I did alright, I get really nervous when I have to get up in front of all my peers. I found it difficult to teach to my peers because they were having small conversation to themselves while I was trying to teach and at times if felt like I was talking to a brick wall. It kind of gave me a taste of my own medicine in the sense that sometimes I don't give my professors 100% of my undivided attention. One thing I would change about my lesson would be the true or false part, it needed to be done in a bigger area, so it could have been done outside or I could have moved the tables. It was hard to tell who was on what side because the tables were in the way. I would also have them talk one at a time why they choose the side that they were on instead of shouting at each other like they did.

October 28

Today Ryan and I did our read aloud to the class, it went a lot easier than I thought it would be. Since we have been in the elementary schools these past few weeks, pretending like I was talking to a bunch of k-5 came easy.

We went over different writing skills and different activities that can be done to work on writing skills and why writing is important, because we write to learn.

We went over a writing strategy called R.A.F.T.

R.A.F.T. stands for..
Role-
Audience-
Format-
Topic-

and we had to choose an example and write a RAFT here was mine:

R- Liver
A- Alcoholic/Drinker
F- Complaint
T- Effects of Drinking

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to inform you of your toxic effects on other people.  You may be the life of the party but you sure are taking the life out of a few of us.  There's only one of me and I can only process 1 drink an hour and you decided to throw back 8 in 20 minutes, You always ask me to work over time on the weekends and even work late on the week days.  I can only take so much before I shut down or go into failure.  AGAIN there is only ONE of me and you need me! I help filter your blood which is essential for you to live.  I know i'm not alone when I say that you really need to cut back on how much you drink when you go out with your friends.  With that being said I'm calling it quits, I refuse to let you keep hurting me because you're only hurting yourself.

-Your Liver

October 21

Today we had a guest speaker, Tricia Easterling came to talk to us about different vocabulary and how to engage students in different word roots it was interesting to see how easy it is to connect the words once you have the root down. She was really funny and you could tell that she really enjoyed her job as a teacher. Also we played around with screen chomp which was a really cool way to engage students in reading and recording through technology.

October 14

Today in class we had 3 read aloud's and continued to talk about read aloud's in general.  We watched a video on a teacher who was very good at interacting with his class during the read aloud and made sure to get all of his students involved.

We also read an article about enhancing literacy in physical education, I learned that you dont have to be a content teacher to teacher content literacy, and that content literacy comprises all of the skills needed to develop, understand, and reflect on content.

October 7

I really liked our guest speaker Laura because she more easy to relate to, she went to teach and teaches PE at Falling Branch right in our back yard.  I really liked the different interactive games she showed us, Dr Poole and Shelton have showed us games like that which are easy to incorporate reading, spelling and even math.

"Just Move Those Beautiful Bodies of Yours"

Today we had a guest speaker, Anne Roberts and she was a really colorful person.  We had to do an activity were we could only let in 8 of 13 people outside of our bomb shelter.  It was really hard to decide with our group because we all had different views and opinions on who we should let in.  I wanted to let the body builder in for his strength were other group members wanted to let in the science teacher or the minister.

She gave a little personal speech toward the end of her activity that we need to expand peoples "file folder" on PE teachers and that if some one would have taken the time to really work with her as a kid that she wouldn't of had such a bad experience with gym and people.  That we all have the power to influence kids to be active and not to judge them just based off of their body size and skill sets.  

We also had two read along's in class and one was based in Virginia on Halloween I really liked it because it referenced different scary creatures from different towns in Virginia. The other book was about bringing different pets to the library and it was funny because none of them could happen but imagining them happening was fun and would of been a great book to read to kids.

Why Yoga Pants Are Incredibly Dangerous to Today's Youth... LOL

http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/guest/why-yoga-pants-are-incredibly-dangerous-to-today-s-youth/article_be9fb59b-9bcd-596e-bbab-5d13d6d3988e.html

I found this article while just scrolling through Facebook and it really appealed to me not only because I love my yoga pants but because I really agree with what she is saying and because I feel like I can really relate to how she felt in high school.  We are teaching  girls that they are asking for it if they wear certain clothes, that when they wear certain things they are taking away from boys "learning environments".  Instead we should be teaching boys to respect women and their bodies and that "boys will be boys" is not a valid excuse for anything.  After reading this article I felt like I had be a victim of this brain wash our society is calling a norm.  I have vivid flashbacks to being publicly humiliated for wearing a skirt to school and if that was punishment enough I was sent home or given lunch detention for the week.  This article made me look back and think about my learning environment, by my junior year of high school I was wearing sweats every other day just to avoid being punished and avoid comments from teacher and the opposite sex.  It brought back a lot of emotions but I loved reading what she had to say and I definitely thought this was worth sharing.