Daily Burn

I have seen sites and programs much like Daily Burn before.  These programs can be very useful.  I have used another form of online tracker before and I have also used a tracker on my phone.  I like how simple it is to track your nutrition and progress when it comes to exercising.  This helps you to improve your health by using all the tools that are available.  This site allows you to track bodyweight and sleep as well.

This website could help to accomplish our Recommened Regents Level for LS #1B.  this would be helpful in aiding students to create their own personal fitness plan.  This allows students to set goals for themselves and to excel in many different areas.  This will improve areas such as nutrition and exercise.

An academic tool that we have used throughout the semester has been Picasa.  This could be used to show progress of fitness plans to teachers and easily track progess.  Students can use Picasa to show their work at the end of each week and then at the end of the year show work from each week.  This will help to show the progress that has been made.

Final Part 1

TJ Crosby
Brain Gains
Part 1b
i.   This web-site is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  The Story comes fro two different places, one school is in Southern Saskatoon Canada and the other is in Naperville, Chicago, United States of America.
ii.  This piece about activities relation to the brain was eye-opening.  We have been stressing "learning through the physical" in EDU 255, this piece was the first time I was able to see it in use outside of our classroom.  I found this article to be very interesting.  The book "Spark" about neurogenesis is directly about "learning through the physical."  The exercise helps with many different things, mostly it seems to help with behavior and helps studens to stay focused.  It is very interesting to see how physical activity can improve subjects other than just physical education.  One eye-opening fact was that when students were tested before and after beginning the program, they gained a full grade level in reading, writing and math.  This piece makes you want to learn more on the subject.
iii.  I don't think we hear anything about the PE teacher being involved is because there are athletes in the class that can do the activities.  PE teachers usually get into a curricullum that the school already uses.  The programs have never used anything like this before, they may have thought that this wouldn't be useful in PE since they are already supposed to be active.  I will be able to ensure that my PE program will be a benefit to the students of the school by using techniques from "Spark."  I will adjust my program accordingly to how the students respond.
iv.  The main benefits of the program were the ways it changed these students' lives.  There were obvious outcomes such as improvement in grades but I tihnk it was the way the program changed the behavior that was most important.  One student, before the program was always angry and wouldn't participate.  After, his grades improved and he was more involved in the class, without anger.  Another student had been smoking since age 8 and drinking since age 10 and he could not read entering 8th grade.  After going through the program he began to turn down his bad habits.  He also saw a 400% increase in his comprehension.  I was very surprised to see how much of an improvement had been made in many different areas.  These outcomes are similar to our New York State PE Standards.  Standard 1a is met when the teacher is shown having the students try different movement on the treadmills to stimulate different parts of the brain.  Standard 1b is met because the students are told to stay keep their heart rates at a certain level and they know how to do so.  Students meet standard 2  because this program causes the students to behave better.  Standard 3 is met because these students knew what they had to do from the program, so they can do the same in their community.
v.  BDNF stands for Brain-derived neurotrophic factor.  BDNF occurs during physical activity and increases ability to learn.  The book mentioned in the video is called "Sparks" by John Ratey.  Another book is "The Kinesthetic Classroom" by Traci Lengel and Mike Kuczala.
Part 1c
There are many different categories that one can be proficient in.  These categories include team passing, net/wall, target, striking, fielding, aquatics, dance and aesthetic, outdoor, personal performance, and fitness.  The recommended regents level for NYS Learning Standard 1A should be atleast 90% of the senior class should be competent in 6 activities and proficient in 3 across 3 different categories.
I think that it should be the recommended regents level of 100% of the senior class for NYS LS 1B, reaching competency in the personal fitness plan.   This will allow students to know how to improve their health related fitness.

Lab D- Teach Me How to Dougie

This lab was a very big eye opener for me.  When I was told that I would have to teach a lesson on hip-hop, I had no clue what I was going to do.  Other than not being a dancer of any kind, hip-hop isn't on the top of the list of music genres that I listen to.  Not only was I supposed to teach hip-hop, which was hard enough since I don't know much about it, but I also had to use technology in my lesson.  This was all a big challenge to me, I had met with my professor and we began running through ideas.  I had to put more into this lesson than any other I had done.  I went through many songs until I finally made my decision to teach the song "Teach Me How to Dougie" by Cali Swag Group.  I chose this song because of the popularity the song and dance had.  If anybody needed to learn 'how to Dougie' it was me.  I had seen the dance but in no way could perform the dance.  I had to spend alot of time watching tutorial videos on youtube before I could actually do the dance.  For the technology portion of my lesson, I used a projecter and speakers to show different videos, tutorials, and music.  Other equipment that I used were ropes and blindfolds.

I wanted to start the class with a hip-hop theme, so for my instant activity I had the class do the Cha-Cha Slide but with a twist.  Since I was going to be teaching "Teach Me How to Dougie," which is an omage to Doug E. Fresh, also known as "the human beatbox," I had each person in the class beatbox during the instant activity.  I followed this up with a video of Doug E. Fresh beatboxing to show the class who he actually was.  It was then time to get into the lesson, I had expected most of the class to be shy, which they were, but they then loosened up.  After a few minutes I noticed that people were coming up to the windows of the gymnasium to watch, this caused most of the class to regress and become embarassed.  When this happened I had the students dance with the blindfolds on, not only was it a task variation but I felt it would help if they didn't feel like all eyes were on them.  This allowed the students to relax.  I then stressed the rope pull cue using the ropes and comparing the move to tug-o-war.  Slowly progressing and giving alot of feedback, which I made sure to give feedback to each person, allowed the students to become increasingly confident throughout the class.

As I mentioned before this lesson was a big eye opener for me.  I previously didn't realize how much work went into these lessons.  I really needed to prepare myself for this since I do not have any kind of hip-hop background.  I actually impressed myself by the time the lesson was over, it really helped my confidence knowing that if I had to teach something that I wasn't familiar with, that I could do it.  Although this lesson was so successful, I felt the most pride during the next class.  The next class I had over have of the students I taught come up to me and tell me that they actually went out over the weekend and used my lesson to dance.





Lesson Plan
Task Progression Sheet

Mini Conference

During the mini conference I attended Coach Babjack's presentation on strength and flexibility.  This presentation was very helpful, Coach Babjack talked about periodization of workouts and other methods of increasing strength and flexibility.  This is very important for me to know since I plan to coach in the future.  I hope to be able to prevent injuries and to get my athletes to maximize their potential.

Time Coding Form

EDU 255 Lab B1

This lab was alot different then the first, although I have played frisbee, I don't know it as well as football which I taught the first lab.  I think this lead to a few of my problems, I didn't feel as successful during this lab.  I didn't realize until after I finished that I had forgotten a whole intriduction, signal for attention, statement about expectation, "hook," and safety statement.  I do think I demonstrated successfully using "DEAD," but I do think that i should have done my demonstrations in the middle of the group so that everyone could see me.  I didn't give as much feedback as I should have.  I think my voice was a lot better during this lab compared to the last.  This lab was very helpful, it opened my eyes to a lot of the things that I need to work on.

EDU 255 Lab A2

I think this experience was better than the first.  This time we had a chance to think about what we were going to do.  I noticed that I did use a hook when mentioning throwing the ball and having it seem as if it was shot down like a duck.  From the start I was fumbling my words which disappointed me.  I tried to use 'DEAD,' and I think that I was successful in doing so.  One thing that I wanted to work on was my voice, I know that I need to speak alot louder and more clear.  I think I did an 'OK' job of giving feedback and I thought it was good that I went over what I taught at the end.