Hi everyone,
Hard to believe it's November already!
.....I had the privilege of having a colleague from another district come to visit my school on Monday! It is always fun to collaborate with other like-minded professionals!
.....Tuesday was a teacher training day in our district and as a result, school was closed for students. I had the opportunity to attend and present at the SEZ of NYSAHPERD Election Day Conference. It was a terrific day and I always come back energized and ready to try out some new ideas!
.....My primary students are finishing up a unit on cooperative/adventure education. As a culmination to this unit, students were climbing our new rock wall. As our wall is magnetic, I placed random letters on the wall and challenged students to touch all of the letters that they could climb to and reach. Many of these students have not been on our wall before and the range of emotions on their faces that I saw before, during, and after their turn on the wall was priceless! I feel extremely fortunate to have a rock wall and provide the opportunity for the challenge and adventure of climbing and spotting to my students!
.....As a result of a grant I received, I was able to create a program called "PE Packs to GO!" where students borrow pedometers for use at home. Students share the packs with two other friends and I challenged the students to reach a combined goal of 10,000 steps. As you might imagine, there are some frustrations involved in getting the packs back in a timely manner.....but on Friday, one of my students came to find me to tell me that his group decided on a new goal - 20,000 steps! He said that two of the three friends who had used the pack had already gotten more than 16,000 steps and the third friend had yet to use it so they increased the goal! That made me realize that this program is definitely motivating students to move more outside of school!
Have a great week! Feel free to e-mail me the best parts of your week at northparkpe@yahoo.com!
