The Best Parts of My Week....

My favorite moments of this week.........

.........a student quote: "It's only paper plates and a mat, but who knew it could be so much fun!".....talking about our figure skating Winter Olympic activity station.


........a student quote: "I was awesome today! I think I won the Gold Medal!"......talking upon leaving PE and self-assessing using the question: Did you do your best in PE today?


........A definition of student success: I encouraged a kindergarten student who was at the "Curling" station by saying: "Almost!" when he slid a bean bag toward the target and the bean bag slid in and out of the target box. He looked at me and said: "What do you mean almost? It went in the box!" My definition of success at the station was that the bean bag would slide in and stay in the target.....his was that as long as the bean bag went in, he was successful!


........Smiling as I watched my students enjoy our Winter Olympic Activity Stations. Check out the activities at my website:
North Park Physical Education. Click on Winter Olympics Activities!

The Best Parts of My Week!

When you live in the Northeast, you learn to be flexible.....snow days, delays, and early releases are a given; and this week we experienced two out of three! Still, there were some great parts of the week!

......watching students rise to the challenge as they were allowed "Freedom With Responsibility" during the end of our gymnastics unit.

......experiencing the excitement of our Jump Rope For Heart Kick-off Assembly. Students and staff are ready to make a difference as we get ready to jump on March 2nd!

.....feeling the pride of our "torch bearers" as we began a Torch Relay warm-up to kick off the Winter Olympics!

The Best Parts of My Week......

Some snippets of this past week......each one made my day!


.......learning as two students taught us how to "share count" in Korean!

.......listening to a kindergarten student recounting a gymnastic experience at a community program saying "that was back when I was a kid..."

.......watching as a first grade student patiently taught a classmate how to tie his shoes after PE class on more than one occasion.

......viewing a "Sea of Red" on Friday as students and adults alike supported "Go Red for Women Day", sponsored by the American Heart Association.

The Best Part of My Day......1/25

Sometimes, the best part of my day involves time outside the gymnasium. Don't get me wrong, I love my job teaching PE!, but I do spend a fair amount of time with students during other events in the building and I enjoy this time as well. This month, I am assigned to supervising students while they are waiting to be picked up at the end of the school day. While some might disagree, I actually like this assignment! For me, it's a chance to interact with students in a different way. It's a great time for relaxed conversation as I ask students about their day, etc. Recently, a few of the "pick-ups" as we call the students, became interested in world capitals. The students are quite bright and know many more of these capitals than I do! They have enjoyed quizzing me at the end of the day and I have enjoyed learning too! Today we started with State Capitals and more and more of the students in this group are getting excited! Tomorrow I am going to bring my set of State Capitals flash cards that I planned to use for a game during PE. I'm going to study too! While this supervision time is brief, it has created teachable moments for many students, myself included!!!!!

The Best Part of My Day.....1/21

Today's story is short and sweet.
During a gymnastics lesson a first grader was using a springboard to jump and land on a landing mat. He was having much fun jumping and landing and had already participated in a rolling station, a balance area, a jump and land station, the "possum hang" and the pull-up station. He was very excited and exclaimed "I wish my house was a gym. Then I could exercise all day!" When we enjoy our exercise we tend to do it more.......find the type of exercise you love and you will be excited too!

The Best Part of My Day.....

Several years ago our principal retired and a new principal was hired. During the first few months of her tenure, she would frequently ask many staff members: "What was the best part of your day today?" The first time she asked me I will admit that I was caught completely off guard! I had to think about the day and come up with a response. While it's not hard to think of something good in every day, many times we just don't do it. We focus on the problems or the things that went wrong or the things we need to fix. Since that time I often think to myself at the end of the day to decide exactly what was the best part of my day. Sometimes it's easy to identify many great events of the day. Other times it's a struggle, but on these days I feel that it's the most important time to go over the day in my head to end on a positive note. As a result of that thinking I have decided to add a section to my blog called: "The Best Part of My Day.....". From time to time I would like to share with you the events of the day that were the best for me. Sometimes they may sound trivial, but for me it was "the best part of my day". Hope you enjoy it! Feel free to e-mail me with stories of "the best part of your day!"

Here's today's entry:

We are currently in the middle of a gymnastics unit. We are very fortunate and we have some great equipment. Students absolutely love this unit! I like to end the lesson with some stretching. I have cards with various stretches on them and I ask students to pick a stretch for the class to do. We do them together using what I call: "Share-Count Stretching" This means that I count 1 and the students count 2; I count 3 and the students count 4 and so on. I find this works really well because it slows down the stretch count and it is something we can do together, but with student input as to the kind of stretch we do. I can add some humor to it as well by whispering - the students whisper back, or speaking loudly and the students speak loudly back. Today we were "Share-Counting" with a fifth grade class and I spontaneously started to count in Spanish. The students responded accurately and enthusiastically! This worked so well I tried with the next class. This class was a third grade class which happens to have several ELL students (English Language Learners) in it. I asked the class first if they knew any Spanish. The smiles and look of pride on the ELL students was amazing! They knew that they would be teaching some other students how to "Share-Count" in their native language! Since I was enjoying this part of the lesson I again tried it with the next class - a K-1 Multi-Age class. Would you believe that they responded just as accurately and excitedly as the other classes! It was a nice addition to our "Share-Count" routine! I told my classes that next time I would teach them how to "Share-Count" in French!
E-mail me "The Best Part of Your Day!"

We All Want to Feel Important!

Yesterday I began a unit in cooperative activities. After many years of teaching Project Adventure style lessons, I should not be surprised at the power of cooperative education, yet I am..... My fourth grade students were playing a game in which "donations" of particular pieces of equipment were necessary if all classmates were going to remain in the game. So this required students giving up something to another classmate, without anything in return, except a "thank you". I was amazed at the ease of the "donations"! Students loved the game and played it easily and with great joy! At the end of many of our cooperative activities, I ask students to share how a particular event made them feel. At the end of this game I asked students how they felt when someone "donated" to them. The responses included "good" and "happy", but one response in particular surprised me. One student responded "important". Upon further discussion, we all agreed that when a classmate "donated" to them, they felt as if they were important enough to the game to be included! We all want to feel important.......the ability to make this happen is truly the power of cooperative education!