The End is near…

Well I have finally finished my placement, nearly 5 weeks to get it finished thanks to sick kids and hospital appointments.  I have enjoyed my time as a Health and Physical Education teacher, getting primary students to actively engage in their learning using ICT features to amplify and enhance their learning.  It has been a long and tiring journey through placement, very early mornings for myself and my children, long days and very late nights.   I take my hat off to my children for enduring my placement with me, being understanding when we have toast for dinner, and a very messy house to come home to.  I now look forward to my last assignment (ICT), a last exam, lots of housework, and lots of time with my family over the next few weeks.

What Does the fox say???

First teaching lesson for this prac was with a  Year 2 class.  I took this opportunity to incorporate my ICT task for Assignment 2 within this lesson.  Our HPE lesson started with a Just Dance session to engage amplify and transform the students learning.  I picked a song the kids would find familiar, and introduced it as ‘My favourite song’.  Check it out What does the fox say?    The kids loved this surprise start to their lesson that also made for a great ice breaker between myself and them.  Perhaps next time we might have a go at some yoga as a cool down activity.

Day 1 – rainy day HPE

First day of prac commenced with a wet weather day.  Combine this with an absent music teacher and bam the HPE team get double classes in a very small classroom space.  So what do we do to keep the children moving, engaged, and learning?  Seeing as the music teacher was away, we could use that classroom facilities and the IWB to get out students moving.  The kids enjoyed Cosmic kids yoga and a variety of Just Dance activities.  I even got myself moving as Just Dance is one of my favourite games to play with my own children at home.  I also caught  a glimpse of my prac teaching partner Kate Watson getting down and moving!  Great first day

ICT and HPE

I am seriously starting to panic about using ICT successfully within HPE during placement.  This term sees the students learning about athletics in the lead up to their Athletic carnival.  I’m hoping that my colleague (Pre Service Teacher) and I  can work collaboratively to use ICT to support each others lessons.  I guess that is a benefit of this placement, I have my own camera person if I need it, and so does she.  I think I may need to have another look at the Australian Curriculum – Health and Physical Education to get some ideas about how to incorporate ICT within these lessons.

Getting into the Placement Zone

Its the day before I start my professional placement and its chaos at my house.  I have an endless list of jobs to do before the morning.  I understand we are all in the same boat, the next 3 weeks will be stressful, tiring, enlightening, and rewarding.  I am lucky my children now understand the ‘placement zone’, and have grown aware of the early mornings, late nights, the crappy thrown together food, and the mum missing from their important school events.  This is only temporary and I appreciate the sacrifices they also make to keep the ball rolling… Speaking of which, I’m excited to be sharing my placement with the wonderful Kate Watson, who keeps me motivated along the way.

Cyber smart and Connect ed.

The connect ed.  portal has been an important professional development tool as a Pre Service educator.  Although I managed to work through each of the 4 modules easily, I wondered if they do a version for younger children.  I could see many benefits from providing this resource to children in Primary school possibly in the year 4 / 5 area.  These children are the next generation of social media experts, and I feel that the education of cyber safety should begin before they have issues not after the fact.  I do believe that they are old enough to understand the pitfalls of our digital society and to be able to act upon issues.  I’m happy to report that I successfully completed my professional development and have been awarded a certificate for my portfolio.

cyber(smart:)

I have just completed my online professional development in being cyber smart.  The Australian Communications and Media Authority have developed this program as a professional development resource.  I have found this online program very useful and very appropriate for educators.  I think they should make one designed to target children, they are the ones that need to see how being online can be dangerous in a variety of ways.  What I did find interesting was the section on using websites.  I sort of feel that our ICT subject has pushed me into using a variety of different websites that I am very uncomfortable with.  I have asked a few people about these sites and they haven’t had a lot of great things to say.  I still stick to my guns that my computer should only be used by myself and only the websites I feel comfortable with.

Tick, tock, Daily Physical Activity Guide

Its Saturday afternoon, I have this assignment to finish before midnight Monday.  I feel the pressure mounting as I struggle to come up with ideas for my unit plan.  I need to find lots of ICT rich resources to keep my students active and engaged in their lessons.  Is it YouTube I need?  Is it the PE Geek?  Perhaps what I need is more like Daily Physical Activity Guide to add some interesting physical activities into my lessons.  My Pre Service Teacher colleague would probably agree that these activities are beneficial for all Health and Physical Education lessons.  The thing I like the most is its available as an app for your IPhone or IPad.

How would you like to work with ICT?

I was reading Saranna’s blog “I don’t know it i still want to be a teacher,” which has had me thinking.  I have recently been looking into another career pathway, perhaps teaching but in the Defence Force.  It’s a little bit different – lots of excitement and challenges!  I sat some tests and although I had been very stressed about passing these, I succeeded to meet the level required for the officer position I was interested in.  I was put into a room with my ‘career advisor’, who couldn’t see my excitement about my success, or my many years of teaching experience as an Adult Educator within Tafe, or my teacher aide qualifications, or even my USQ Bachelor of Education subjects I have already completed.  The only thing he could see was that 27 years ago I hadn’t passed my year 12 English subject.

This was heartbreaking for me because the words that came out of his mouth was – “How would you like to work with ICT?”  Obviously he has never heard of EDC3100 or of the students who are already pulling their hair out trying to complete Assignment 2.

Classroom or HPE???

I am on the same page as Kate Watson in regards to using a classroom topic or HPE topic for assignment 2.  Unfortunately even in a perfect world, the use of ICT in HPE is extremely limited.  I spoke to another HPE educator and asked the question – ‘How do you use ICT in your HPE lessons?’  His answer expressed many issues with this; lack of time and lack of equipment were the main issues he addressed.  This was a main concern for primary students as opposed to secondary students.  Students only receive 1 40 minute HPE lesson per week, limiting the time students could access ICT resources.  Perhaps this will change one day.