Cortland Dance Company Recital

This past weekend was the Cortland Dance Company Recitals, and I must admit that they both went absolutely amazing. All of the dancers did a great job with their dances and I could not be more proud to be part of a company! We had all types of dances from hip hop, jazz, lyrical, step, irish step, tap, and so much more! I want to thank everyone who came out to support us! We had two awesome crowds who really cheered us on! Below will be some pictures from some of the dances!


Sirens:

Step In Time (from Mary Poppins)

 Fake ID (from Footloose):

Rolling in the Deep:

 Thank you Cortland Dance Company for an amazing semester at Cortland. Congratulations to all of the seniors! You girls are going to do great with all that you do after graduation!

What To Expect Now?

As April 23rd was my last PED 201 lab at Saint Marys, I had a lot of fun, and learned more than I ever thought I would about the students. This semester has made me grow a lot as a teacher candidate! I cannot wait to continue on in my journey next semester with EDU 255 and doing middle and high school observations over the winter for EDU 256! I would like to thank all of my peers, Professor Yang, our lab assistents, and everyone at Saint Mary's for making this semester such a success for me! Below are few of the most important things that I have learned throughout this semester. I enjoyed each and every lab, but some moments for course stood out more than others. 

Young children are extremely interesting in so many ways. They are the most creative at everything they do. They can make walking across the gym into a wild adventure through a rainforest where you are being chased by lions! I love being around younger children because it lets me be creative as well. Elementary students love when you make scenarios for them to act out. Middle school and high school students are not as fun to do things like this with! They do not get into it. Games that are appropriate are games that allow students to be creative. For example, today in lab we were doing parachute games and Steve had the students tell him what they wanted to add to our soup (being balls thrown into the parachute). One of the little boys next to me tugged on my shirt and I leaned down to hear that he wanted to add Macaroni and Cheese to our soup! Who else would think of macaroni and cheese in soup besides a elementary aged student! Games that are not appropriate are the ones that again they will not understand. Any game that will take more than two minutes to explain is probably a game that they will not understand. Games with little rules are perfect. The more rules the less understanding. 

All of the students favorite games are with the parachute. Bringing the parachute to the last lab was the best idea I think from the entire semester. The participation we had was incredible. We could play simple games with them, but they would have so much fun with them. Games were as simple as saying if you were holding blue run under the parachute and grab a new color on the outside! The students had a blast with the giant parachute. They could have stayed there for hours just lifting it up and down making waves.

I love the Pre K program at Saint Mary’s. It is perfect for the age group. They have time where they can run around and get their energy out, but at the same time have time to relax, and settle down. For the most part they were the most well behaved students. They listened to every word you were saying and always tried to follow the rules. When they were not following the rules it was because they did not understand them. When older children do not follow the rules it is normally because they are bored and are going to cause trouble. I did enjoy working with this age group on the day I was assigned to them however I do not know if I could do it all of the time because sometimes I do not have the patience to explain myself a hundred times, and you do that every day with the Pre K room.

I am eager to move on to observe older students, and actually get into a teaching environment rather than a after school program. I again have enjoyed this semester more than any other and I know this is just the beginning of a great journey to becoming a physical educator! I am not sure what to expect from the middle and high school students because my experiences with children of these ages are at a sleep away camp.  A school and camp setting are two very different things for children. I do not want to go into these observations with the expectations that I do with my campers because naturally when children are at camp they act much different than they would in school. 

Again I want to thank all of my peers, Professor Yang, our lab assistants and the staff and students of Saint Mary's Elementary School. 

This is a highlight reel from my experiences throughout the past semester in PED 201! Hope you enjoy!

Beautiful Day For Building

It was a wonderful lab where every single person, students and my fellow college students were more than excited and ready to play! The enthusiasm was showing through everyones actions the second we walked into Saint Marys on April 16th. 


Last Monday the Physette's were the gym group! We were very excited to finally have this section and were even more happy that it is the last place we will teach! I was very happy with our performance in lab because the students seemed to be extremely into our games. Some got a little bored in the games where they were just standing around or dribbling back and forth down the court. I liked my game a lot because it was a mix of sports I knew students would enjoy. "Socketball" was a combination of soccer and basketball where students can dribble the all with either their hands or feet and score either a basketball hoop or soccer goal. Putting certain restrictions of the game are a good idea as well to help control the amount everyone plays. 




Once we were done in the gymnasium we went down to the cafeteria with the students and were playing with the legos! I had a challenge with one boy who did not think I could build a five foot tall tower of blocks. Although he was correct, I took the challenge, and worked long and hard on my tower that ended up being a crazy one foot tall. It was interesting to see all of the students creativity at work because we do not get to see it as much when in the gymnasium having them play our games. We really get it when we give them some free space to come up with their own ideas. Some of the girls were making pageant stages out of the legos while some of the guys were creating crazy looking cars, boats, and airplanes. 




Click here to read my Lab 5 assessment!

Math, Reading, and Physical Education?

In lab on April 9th we were in the Exergame room. This was a whole new world introduced to me. I am extremely impressed with the amount of activities there were and how much you could do with them. Each game gives you multiple options to keep the entire room moving rather than 4 or 5 students. Technology never seizes to amaze me in physical education. There are activities for students of all ages that will hold their interest for an entire physical education class. The dance game was one of these games that could keep students moving for hours on end. I really liked how it let everyone pick their own level of difficulty rather than a general level for everyone. This lets students challenge themselves as they want rather than forcing them to either play a less or more advanced version of the game for their personal ability. Each person can set the level based on their ability without affecting anyone else's game. 


The Exergame Lab is filled with a bunch of fun games for students of all ages and abilities. The kick boxing game being one of the best! I would use this game in middle schools and high schools especially with all students of all abilities. This game gives students no excuses at all to not be participating in any way that they want. For example, if a student has a broken leg, give them a padded pole to hit the targets on the punching bag. Students who are not up to the punching bag can use the dance mats in the background or even punch anad kick as if they had a bag in front of them. There are many ways of using the different games in the Exergame lab. Meeting the CEO of Exergaming was really nice too because he could answer any questions that we had! I like that we can use our own music for the games because everyone exercises to different music. In a class you can have each student pick on song and make a play list to go through in each class. Also, it gives you a bigger variety of songs to use rather than the slim selection Dance Dance Revolution gives us. 

The biking game is interesting as well. There are two different versions aimed for students of different ages. I played the one aimed towards elementary students, and still had a great time! We played it where one person was using their arms to spin the peddles of the bike while the other person was steering. Again this brought education into the classroom because instead of just riding a bike around a track, there were different problems, letters, or numbers that we had to collect. The level we played was aimed more for kindergarten and younger. We did letter and number identification. This game again gets students to work on other subjects while being physically active. It can work the same way as the dance or kick boxing games do where you can set up other bikes in the background and have students biking as well. If there are not enough bikes for every student to have their own, then pair them up and have one peddle and one steer!


There are other great games that would perfect for elementary aged students. One in particular is hyper dash. Pre-schoolers can use this game to practice their colors and numbers. First and second graders can use it to practice their adding and subtracting. Third grade through fifth grade can use this game to practice multiplication and division. This game is great because it can incorporate physical education with other classes. Students will be more willing to learn if they are not just sitting there being told to do 5 math problems on their paper. This game allows of students to do some critical thinking while moving around. Some ways of using this game could be to set the answer "plates" around the room and students listen for the question and then run, gallop, skip, lead, etc. to the answer around the room. Using hyper dash is a great way to incorporate other subjects into physical education. 

Cortland Dance Company Activities!

First, on Friday April 13th Cortland Dance Company surprised everyone with a Flash Mob in Neubig Dining Hall. We performed to We Found Love by Rihanna. The surprise seemed to cause some excitement throughout the dining hall when two of the girls stood on top of their chairs dancing. Being apart of this Flash Mob was a great experience for me. I had a lot of fun with the girls I spend the most time with. It was a wonderful bonding experience for all as well! And I can happily say I can cross "Being apart of a Flash Mob" off my list of things to do before I die! 

Last night, Cortland Dance Company performed at Relay for Life in the ice arena of Poolside. All of the girls did an amazing job during the performance. However, that is not all we did! We took part in every event that we possibly could including three-legged races, pudding eating contests, and playing Just Dance. I am so proud of everyones enthusiasm during this event last night. We also taught our flash mob performance to all participants who were willing to learn a fun quick dance! At the end of the night our team even won an award for never giving up! It was nice to see all of our enthusiasm did not go unrecognized. We are an amazing group of girls who love to have fun. None of us care about embarrassing ourselves while having as much fun as we can together and that goes a long! I truly am more than glad to be part of Cortland Dance Company and love all of the great times we all have together!

Performing Rolling in the Deep!

Teaching the Flash Mob!

If you want to see some of the amazing dances that we do, come see us perform at Cortland High School Friday April 27th at 6:00pm or Saturday April 28th at 12pm. Doors open an hour before the performances start! These shows are worth taking the time out of the day to see! Tickets are $5 in advanced and $7 at the door! Hope to see you all there! If you have any questions about the recitals feel free to email me at lauren.garbarino.pe@gmail.com 

All who performed at Relay for Life! Great job to all!

Embarrassing and Fun

In PED 201 this past week we all had a great experience by performing our Infant Development Skits LIVE at Poolside. Although it was a bit embarrassing to get up infront of my peers and teachers, I had a lot of fun with my group performing our song. Check out the Physettes' original video below! 

We had Chapter 5 in our text which is about Prenatal Birth Defects, and how everything a mother does effects her unborn child! The lyrics are shown throughout the song incase there are some areas where you could not hear them! Hope you enjoy!


Good job to everyone who performed. Hope you all had as much fun as I did! 

Here are some fun pictures from our live performance!

Check out the other Physettes' blogs as well!

Kendra

MK

Christina

Bulletin Board and Teddy Bear Games at St. Marys!

This past week lab 4 took place. We were the special projects group this week, and I personally was in charge of the bulletin board. I am extremely happy with how my first ever bulletin board came out at Saint Mary's! Our group also had to do the closing game, song/dance, and cheer. Overall I believe we all worked well together this week. I believe that the game however was a bit inappropriate for the mix of ages that we had. Playing rocks paper scissors tag with the students would have been better if it was played with students around the game age. The 5th graders were beating the pre-school students every round of the game, and it did discourage the younger students. Also, we all need to remember to give safety statements before our games and keep reminding students what they can and cannot do throughout the game! During rock paper scissors tag some of the older students were slapping the college students and some pre-school students which was extremely inappropriate and we were lucky none of the younger students got hurt because of this. Part of our job as future physical educators is to make sure that every single student goes home without any injuries. 

After we had finished the putting the bulletin board up, I played jump rope with some of the girls ranging in ages from 1st grade to fifth grade. They taught me two new games that I had not previously heard of! The first game is a song called "Teddy Bear." 


"Teddy bear teddy bear turn around
Teddy bear teddy bear touch the ground
Teddy bear teddy bear go upstairs
Teddy bear teddy bear say your prayers
Teddy bear teddy bear turn out the lights
Teddy bear teddy bear say goodnight"


The second game was called the "Grade Game." One person at a time would run through the turning jump rope without getting hit or stopping the rope from turning. If you do that successfully then you have moved up a grade. It starts with kindergarten and goes all the way through college. However, if you do not get through the rope you then start back at kindergarten. The first person to make it through college wins the game!! Both of these games kept the girls busy and they enjoyed playing them over and over again until we were called in to do final games. 



In gym group did an excellent job at keeping the students interested in their games! This surprised me a lot because this was the first time we really saw games where we had to end the game before the students got bored and ended the game themselves. The garbage can game was a perfect example of this. They let the students go on playing this game for about 10 minutes, but they then had to close the garbage can, and move onto other games. It was nice to see that some of us were having success with the games we plan. 

Christina, MK, myself, and Kendra during Lab 4!

Remember to check out my Lab 4 Assessment sheet!