Kinesiology 389: Honors Health and PE for the Elementary Classroom Teacher

I took Kinesiology 389 with Dr. Lucas during my spring semester in 2020. This class was one where I was able to learn a lot without having to constantly be taking notes or listening to lectures.

One of the first things we did on the first day of class was an activity where everyone in the class was up and moving. We all had a poster with a different state and when a ball was passed to a student, that student had to name the capital of the state. Even if we did not know the capital of our state, we were all able to learn from each other and see how easy it is to integrate movement into a lesson within the first thirty minutes of class.

Throughout the semester there were some classes that were mainly lectures in which I was taking notes, but the majority of the time, classes were structured in a way where we were integrating movement. At the very least, we would have a break halfway through class where we would do an activity that go us all up and moving. With classes structured in this way, I was able to see how easy it is to integrate different movement activities in a variety of lessons in order to get students moving throughout the day and help them better retain the information they are learning. Throughout the class, we looked at how to integrate movement as well as why is it vital for children’s development and learning to integrate movement or physical education in the general classroom.

Two of the assignments in this class were to create lesson plans. The first was a health lesson plan and the second was a lesson plan integrating movement with any subject. The first lesson was done as a group and is attached below. For this lesson, my group and I decided to integrate our health lesson with movement. Also with this lesson, we attempted to incorporate a variety of learning styles into the lesson to better reach every student. The goal of this lesson was for students to be able to identify different body parts and organs as well as describing different activities that could help keep their bodies healthy. We began our lesson by singing and dancing to the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with a verse that included the heart, brain, lungs, and stomach. This song and dance helped to get students moving at the beginning of the lesson as well as helping them identify where certain body parts of organs are on the body. Following the song, we broke students into groups and provided them with a large piece of paper on which they traced one student and labeled the body parts and organs we identified in the song. This activity was interesting because many of the groups went above and beyond by labelling parts of the body we did not identify in the song and even added different features to their picture like glasses or different outfits. After the groups finished, we discussed the diagrams the groups created as a way to check that all students correctly identified the body parts and organs. We then followed this activity with a discussion of how we can keep our bodies healthy as well as having students participate in different physical activities to demonstrate easy ways we can keep ourselves healthy. I really enjoyed creating and teaching this lesson because it gave myself and my group a chance to actually practice what we were learning in a low stakes environment. We taught the lesson to our class who pretended to be a first grade class. Having the opportunity to create and teach a lesson incorporating movement in a low stakes environment was very beneficial because I was able to see the aspects of that lesson that worked well and aspects that need to be improved upon. Having different groups creating different lessons was also very beneficial as I was able to learn from seeing these students teach instead of only from lectures by the professor.

The second lesson I created in this class was after the semester moved online because of Covid. Due to this, this lesson was done individually and recorded instead of being taught to the class. For my lesson, I decided to integrate a social studies lesson on map skills with the movement skills of skipping, jumping, leaping, and galloping. In order to integrate these concepts into one lesson, I created a map with different symbols that represented a different movement. For example, a circle represented skipping, a square represented jumping, a triangle represented leaping, and a heart represented galloping. On the map, I created a path around different obstacles that used these symbols. The students would then read this map to go through the obstacle course using the four different movements. This lesson could also be changed by having students create their own maps with different movements that their fellow classmates would have to read and follow.

Overall, this was one of the most interesting and beneficial classes that I have taken during my time at Longwood. I was able to learn through demonstrations, my fellow classmates, and by practicing what I was learning in a low stakes environment where I was helped through the process. Creating these two lessons allowed me to see how easy and integral it is to incorporate movement into lessons in the general classrooms as it not only helps students retain the information they are learning, but gives them a break from sitting at a desk all day and engages them with the information they are learning.