Teaching HPE

Teaching HPE definitely has it’s perks. As I am a sporty sort of person I love being outside rather than in the classroom all day. The best part about teaching physical education is that you can write 1 lesson plan and use it for 4 classes. Even though it does get repetitive, I was able to take on feedback to perfect the lessons as they went on.

I was teaching full days for two weeks of my professional experience which allowed me to experience what it would be like to do all the planning and organisation of a full time teacher. Which is quite amazing. According to 45 enlightening facts about teachers on average, teachers work an average of 10 hours per day and 52 hours per week.

Professional experience

After completing the activities on the study desk, I went through and read peers responses to the activities on What do you know about professional experience it was quite interesting to read the different responses. Not the responses as much, more how peers write their responses. Some in essay form, some in dot points and others numbers with the question then their response.

Also, I find it quite interesting that we are only required to do only one full day of teaching. I feel I benefitted more from my professional experience as I was teaching continuously as if a full time teacher would which gave me the experience of becoming a teacher and what it involves

Feedback

Feedback can be very hit and miss. Have you ever had feedback where you feel useless, worthless and like you can’t do anything right? Well after reading Abigail’s blog – what is good feedback? I started thinking about the feedback I had received while completing my professional experience. The feedback my mentor provided me with was actually good quality feedback.

But what makes good feedback? According to The Tipster

1. It is descriptive rather than evaluative
2. It is specific rather than general
3. It is solicited rather than imposed
4. It is checked To ensure clear communication
5. It is well timed
6. It is directed toward behavior that the person receiving feedback can do something about.
7. It takes into account the needs of both the receiver and giver of feedback.

Link to the curriculum

Creating a lesson plan based on what your mentor tells you to is easy, find activities, think of teaching strategies, think of things that could go wrong, etc. But actually having to think, write a unit plan, link to Australian Curriculum and make it engaging seems like a lot much more detailed planning. Especially when the curriculum is creating new versions constantly.

The school where I completed my PE used the c2c as a guideline. For those who don’t know, the c2c was created by the government to help ensure every state school was on a similar track. Even though, after talking to a few of the teachers, they are not very fond of it. They did say it was quite helpful to plan the unit for the term.

As I am doing this assignment based on the Physical Education curriculum trying to link these lessons to a content descriptor is easy. It’s just finding which one fits best. As they are all so broad and cover pretty much everything!

ICT issues

Reading Mrs. H post on her first week of professional experience and her mishap with the printer. I thought about the IT person that was at my placement and he was amazing. You would make a call and he would be there within half an hour and could fix any problem. Now my problems were probably so,plea for him, which is embarrassing because I was stuck on it for ages trying to figure out what is wrong with the projector but it just turns out you have to put in a special mode and press all the right buttons in the right order and all that.

He was saying that he gets at least 5 calls a day from teachers needing help with technology. But when he isn’t using his IT magic in the classroom, he is setting up the new iPads that the school got, updating software on the schools 150 or so computers, monitoring password updates and bugs in computers or emails.

 

Creating a balance

Because I currently work as a teacher aide I was unable to work during my prac. This made it much easier to balance Uni and my social life. However, it’s nearly impossible to have a social life with no income for a month trying to pay the bills. Getting back into the routine after prac is so off putting. Only two weeks to go and it’s holidays and you’re thinking about the break you get and wish it was now, but your trying to find motivation to finish this assignment even though you’ve already passed the course…. It’s hard.

Trying to balance work/Uni/social life it’s quite tricky. After reading How do you maintain balance? I have found that I am managing my time better and finding time to go to the gym, or have a coffee with friends and still getting my assignments done.

 

Challenges in professional experience

The biggest challenge would be changing from classroom to physical education or vice versa. Planning lessons for physical education can be difficult as there are so many factors to take into consideration, such as; weather, risk factors, safety of students and sun protection. Behaviour management is also more difficult in an outdoor area as your voice and the students are not confined to one area. They are spread out and if it is windy your voice will not carry as far.

Staying on top of University assignments and study is also quite difficult as I am part time I am taking second year courses and those classes do not ‘break’ when I am on my placement.
My biggest worry this prac coming up is mostly because i have not been on a prac for 1 year and it is quite daunting heading to a new school, meeting new teachers and students and not sure how it operates as a community.

I do not have as much experience using ICT in physical education as the lessons are a lot more shorter and are to a strict time table. Using ICT is also not as readily available as there is not projector screen or computers on the oval and not all schools have access to iPads every lesson, if at all.

Procrastination

We all go through procrastination and if you say you haven’t, you’re probably lying. There is always something better to do, something more tempting and let’s face it, anything is better than assignments! With these 3 assignments due I thin the upcoming two months I am trying to get them mostly completed before I go on my professional experience. However, procrastination has got the better of me.

I tried researching procrastination and how to stop it from happening. Reading How we procrastinate was quite interesting. It also has tips on how to help stop procrastinating and why we procrastinate.

Hpwever, I found this article the most useful and I actually got a fair bit of my assignment done from doing some of those tips. I suggest you all have a read 🙂

Hope it helps!

Past experience of ICT in HPE

Until researching Assignments integrating ICT for Health and Physical Education I didn’t realise how scarce ICT was in primary HPE. After reading Kirby’s blog post I completely forgot about how in senior Physical Education we had to complete an assignment on biomechanics in volleyball. We had to analyse our own volleyball serve and compare it to a professional volleyballer using a computer program.We had someone film our volleyball serve and we had to slow it right down using the program and find a professional and slow theirs down to the same point as ours.

This has really helped me with assignment 2 and creating an assessment task and designing a 3-5 week unit plan. As in the past I have found it quite difficult relating most of my subjects back to HPE this was quite helpful in my path to becoming a HPE teacher.

Back at it

After submitting all 3 assignments before Easter break I decided to have a well earned two week break. Much like Mrs. H I went camping for 3 nights and had no television, phones, iPads, computers just a simple camp fire and people to talk to. The time without ICT was great! After reading Going a Day Without My Phone Changed Everything I realised it wasn’t actually that hard and I found myself going to bed earlier as I didn’t have anything to look at and actually enjoying the moments rather than everyone talking photos of everything.

However, once we did get into where there was phone reception I had missed 13 calls and 7 messages from work, family, friends and university. Which is actually quite stressful to listen to all the  messages and trying to call work and organise things and catch up with family all over again. It took me at least a good 3 days before I finally got back to everyone!!

But it was a great and well deserved break. Hope everyone stayed safe and had a happy Easter 🐰🐰