My Favorite Web Sites
American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance
National Association for Sport & Physical Education
PE central
Health Teacher.com
My name is Brian Yensen. This page is designed to offer a little bit of information about my preperation to become a professional physical educator. I have included some sample lesson plans and one sample unit plan from my student teaching placements during my final semester at West Virginia University. In addition, I have included pre and post test data from a fitness unit to show that the unit was effective, as well as my teaching, and also I have included some personal reflections on my strengths and weaknesses, as well as some peer and professional evaluations of my teaching.
My Stengths and Weaknesses
To begin with my stengths. I am a very detailed and organized lesson planner. I include every little aspects of each lesson I teach. Also, I have been really practicing my positive discipline. I feel that positive discipline will soon replace old fashion discipline, like screaming and yelling. Positive discipline uses the students desire to hear their name being said, and also their desire to be noticed and uses these desires against them in order to maintain order in the gym or classroom. The final strength that I will mention is that I develop good relationships with the students but I never get too buddy buddy with them. I know that if I become their friend instead of their teacher then I will have lost all control of the class. My weaknesses are not actual teaching weaknesses but management weaknesses. For example, I have been known to give out equipment before I explain the task at hand. This forces me to spend a minute to get everyone to put the equipment on the ground beside them and try to leave it alone for a minute. In addition, I tend to be too patient and open minded. This comes into play when I introduce a new task and sometimes let the skill practice run a little bit too long, thinking that the less skilled learners are very close to 'getting' it. This can cause problems because the high and average skilled learners have already acheived competency and are getting bored, which can lead to behavior problems. I think this weakness proves my good natured and easy going personality.
My Resume
My Educational Philosophy
Below are some examples of some lesson plans and one unit plan that I made for my physical education student teaching placements. The unit plan is for a one wall racquetball unit that I taught at the middle school level. It progressed from skill introduction to game play with a culminating tournament. The lesson plans include lessons from a handball unit, a badminton unit, and a fitness unit including both weight training and cardiovascular endurance training. |
Below I have included some pre test and post test data to prove my effectiveness as a physical educator. The data was collected during a 4 week fitness unit taught during my placement at a local high school setting. The data was gathered from a first period class of hard workers with the exception of a few students. The data collected was from a high school fitness unit that was actually five weeks long but it took half of a week to pre-test in the beginning and half a week to post-test everyone at the end. So the students actually got 4 weeks to work on their muscular strength and cardiovascular endurance. As you will see from the data, most students (85%) improved in 3 out of 4 categories. The Pacer category is a test used by the Fitnessgram program to test aerobic or cardiovascular endurance. It is designed to someday replace the mile run in the Presidential Fitness Testing program. In regards to the students that did not improve in 3 out of 4 categories, as I am beginning to find out, not everyone is as interested in strength and conditioning as I am. It is impossible to reach every student and change their attitudes towards physical activity. I feel that the students improved as much as they did because I tried to instill a very positve, upbeat, and informative environment in the weight room and the various activities used to increase cardiovascular endurance. This meant that i usually participated in the activities with them, for example, I did Tae bo, ran a fitness trail in the woods 7 times a day, ran the mile run with them, helped out to even up teams in the ultimate frisbee game, and also did the Pacer pre and post test with the students. By engaging myself in the lesson with the students I know that it hurts my ability to manage and oversee the students and their behaviors but it increases the students motivation greatly. I feel that the increased level of motivation is worth it because I also found that when I was engaged in activity with the students there were less discipline and management problems to take care of. The students got so caught up in trying to beat the teacher that they actually forgot to misbehave to get attention. |
Below are some sample health lesson plans that I have created for use in the secondary school health setting. Most of my lesson plans are a little bit of lecture, and a lot of activites. By including a lot of activities to reinforce and clarify the lesson topic, you are increasing the chance that the students will stay interested and motivated to learn.
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