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Nicholas Plourde April 3, 2014 Lesson #1 Strategies for Badminton Gameplay Kevin Magee East Longmeadow High School

In my first teaching episode at the high school level, I felt like I took the necessary steps needed in order to ensure that my instruction would be effective, but did not execute it through my performance with regards to my planning and preparation. With that being said, the lesson for which I had created fit into the structure of what they had already been presented as well as developmental level of the students in light of the fact that it was centered on various tactics they could use when playing badminton. For my lesson plan, I had the learners compete in a doubles tournament against one another seeing as it was there last day of the unit in which I would stop at given points in time to present strategies they could use to help them succeed during their games. I found this to be a useful method because it helped to support their performance, which then increased the engagement they experienced when involved in this gameplay. One area that did not go so well due to my lack of planning and preparation was my communication of the content. This occurred because of my inability to assimilate vivid and succinct wording to the class, which led to some off-task behavior since they became bored with what I was issuing them. To improve this behavior for my future teachings, it will be imperative that I focus on making sure that wordiness is limited from my guidance of material by presenting the students with questions about what is being provided to get them engaged and acquire a better sense of background information that they have regarding the specific content to use as an outline for what they need to be informed about. The content that I delivered to the students in the lesson was created in an effort to provide a developmentally appropriate progression for what the learners were already made aware of in prior lessons of the unit. In relation to the effectiveness of this approach was how it gave the students an opportunity to do well in a real-life situation by providing them with helpful techniques tailored to their progress. Through my informing of these badminton strategies, the students could then be supplied various opportunities to respond in their participation by employing the authentic practice with having them partake in this tournament arrangement. On the other hand, the negative that resulted from presenting this content was that it required the learners to use a new scheme for playing badminton that they were unfamiliar with, which explains why they easily became frustrated with it. This made it difficult for me to get the students motivated to want to utilize the tactics into the activities based on how they felt it would affect their performance in the tournament. To fix this issue, I think that the best option will be to grant the class with adequate practice time to work on using these skills before getting into an activity where the outcome is directly related to executing them so that they have obtained the proper training to then feel comfortable with it. My transition and classroom management skills was an aspect of my lesson in which conflicting outcomes of my performance were highly visible. The portion of the teaching that I experienced prosperity with in reference to implementing beneficial instruction to the learners was transitions. In addition, I was able to limit the time where this occurred by creating a useful mechanism for students to switch their opponents depending on whether they won or lost their games. This was crucial based on how it elevated the sum of

academic learning time accomplished by the class due to a reduction in occasions for when movement between the different portions of the lesson were taking place. Contrary to this success, my management skills were lacking in that I spent most of my time walking around with my back to the wall to issue feedback in mainly one location for a substantial span of time to desist behavior of individuals that were frequently engaged in disruptive actions during the teaching. This was a major blemish that negatively affected the learners attainment of the content brought forth to them in light of how only a set number of them were given the fundamental evaluation of their execution. In my succeeding lessons, I hope to prevent this from transpiring again by utilizing the pedagogical strategy of scanning so that each student is in my realm of vision at all times regardless of position within the instructional setting, which should, in turn, manufacture a better system to give them comments related to their performance at equal levels. In my presentation of the content for this lesson, I was able to get the main points across to the class, though just not in a manner that persuaded the students to want to incorporate them in the tasks planned. It was evident that my learners were able to take information away from my instruction based on the fact they correctly answered every informal question I posed to them about it. This was vital because it let me know that they comprehended the basic message of why they were learning about strategies for badminton gameplay. However, they were reluctant to implement them when completing the activities. This may be the result of not creating tasks which strictly focused on their usage as opposed to having them go straight into an organized tournament so that they could then work on improving these tactics. My goal is to add more enthusiasm to the guidance that I offer my students to increase their excitement for partaking in the material taught in the lesson in the future to solve this problem. Although the feedback that I provided to the learners may have been unequal in terms of who received it, the actual statements issued were parallel to the content presented to them during the lesson. This was really helpful with giving them the knowledge needed to either continue or refine their execution of the skills in focus. In doing this, they could then aim at making the significant adjustments to produce a sustainable motion that promoted an ability to achieve a heightened level of competitiveness when playing in the tournament. As I stated prior, the feedback that I supplied to the students was not the same total for each of them, but another problem that I encountered upon using this form of critique was that not everyone made the changes to their performance that they were suggested of. This could very well be because I was unclear when explaining it to them or I did not put enough emphasis on how crucial the effect of these alterations can have when implemented. The best method in making these instructional comments effective, as a teacher, is to physically show them how they are utilized so that they are more inclined to practice them, which will be what I plan on doing in my teachings going further. Based on the feedback for which I received on my performance, there were definitely some areas that they thought I did a great job in, but there were also areas that they think I still need to work on in regards to carrying out specific teaching behaviors. The quality that they felt I was the most strongest in was my ability to utilize the space and equipment provided to offer the students with a multitude of opportunities to respond. This may be the result of not having any instance during the course of my teaching where no learner was ever waiting. I was then able to encourage the class to constantly stay active due to this occurrence. An aspect that they found to be very weak from my pedagogical behaviors was, as prior mentioned, making my informing both clear and concise. My greatest struggles have usually come with this category of instruction based on the fact I have to often think about what I am going to say when speaking. This is a bad habit because it slows down the

flow of presentation in order for me to process what the most effective way to get through to the students is. The only option that I believe will help me to minimize this transgression, moving on, is to rehearse my lesson plan before teaching it in order to get a sense of how to enlighten the learners with the information prearranged. Finally, the most important thing that I learned from this lesson is to always have a backup plan when having the students compete in a tournament. Since I had only prepared a setup that fit the normal class size of the learners I teach, I encountered an obstacle that I did not think I was going to be faced with. Therefore, when I found out that some of the individuals were absent for the day, I had to quickly figure out how to establish a new system that would accommodate this unexpected circumstance. The issue though that ensued upon making this quick-thinking decision was that the structure of how the class was going to play one another was negatively affected. For example, due to having an uneven number of teams they had to switch between who would play against themselves on a designated court for each round of games, whereas one of the teams was forced to be made up of three players. The impact of this unorganized configuration resulted in the students confusion, which made them unmotivated about putting forth their full -fledged effort when participating because they never really knew where they stood in terms of team standings. Thus, this was a major takeaway for me from this teaching in that it showed the importance of how the learners performance can be influenced by having a wellcoordinated arrangement in relation to any culminating gameplay in how I discovered that adolescents of this age group are stimulated to attain an enhanced role of execution through a certain level of competitiveness.

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