St. Mary's Physical Education 1

Last Monday was our first real lab at St. Mary's. This was the first time we prepared and taught games to the students in our lab groups and could observe how different teaching techniques worked. One observation we focused on were differences between the students based on their gender, age, and abilities. The younger students were more open to try the new games. When these students did not want to play a new game they were easy to make a deal with to try the new one now and do something else after. Differences due to ability were harder to track. Sometimes a high ability gave the students confidence doing some tasks in the endless bucket game but at other times a high ability made certain movement tasks boring. The male and female students had many similarities and showed the basic male/female relationship that you would expect in kindergarten and first grade students. The girls tended to travel around in groups more and do things together while the boys were fine to run around on their own.
The fine motor movement observation was more noticeable in the older students. The kindergarten students needed to focus to display fine motor movements and when rushing or not paying attention they were not so fine. The older students and children with a higher ability in a specific task could display these movements without much thought and at many speeds. The concentration they showed to perfect their fine motor movements was easily noticed when they played with leggos. They needed to concentrate to put the pieces together correctly. There were less gender differences in fine motor movement than social behavior. Overall this was a good lab session and I'm excited for the next one.