Off and Running at St.Mary's (201)

Off and Running at St.Mary's.  It was a great way to start our experiences at St. Mary's this week.  Thanks to all the Lab Assistants for leading games and showing you how to organize/lead games as well as interact with the students. Here are some general comments we observed this week:
General Comments:

• Polo shirts made you look so professional. Thank you.
• Great to see so many of you getting down to their level in order to interact with them. Remember that you will be 2-4 times bigger than they are!  
• Engaging the students in conversations is a great way to let them know you care about them and want to know more about them.
• Playing with their real or imaginary toys is perfect.  As we discussed children and especially toddlers need to hear at least 16,000 words a day in order to develop proper language skills. You should be helping to add to those totals by talking to them and sometimes helping them with sentence structure, grammar, and of course vocabulary.

Things to Work On (TWO):

• Please do not wear the baggy cargo shorts, \shorts with strings hanging off. or wrinkly shorts.
• If you do not have a PE polo shirt, I have some that you can buy for $20 or you can wait for the PE apparel sale over the next couple of weeks.
• Don't be afraid to be expressive with your face and body language.  Remember that over 70% of what and how you communicate is non-verbal.  What is  Ben telling the student by being on the ground, playing, and reacting as he is in the photo to the right?

Prep Labs Next Week:

• 3-5pm
• Park Center in Gym 305 or 316
• Please bring your textbooks to lab next week
• Be prepared to move around

Assignment:

• Please post your reaction to last week's experiences in lab. What did you notice about the students?  What was their skill level like in the activities that were done?  What was their attitude towards you or the games you were playing?
• Talk about with whom you interacted but instead of using the student's real name, use a pseudonym, e.g. "Sammie" for "Stephanie" or "Mickey" for "Mike".
• You need to download Picasa (free for PC & Mac).  
• Grab and post at least one photo from our album (already 200+ photos) on your blog.  When you're viewing the online album, only use the DOWNLOAD button to grab individual pics or download the entire album.  (See screenshot) 
• DO NOT "right-click" and "Save image as..." - that will only grab a very small thumbnail.  Whenever you post anything, be sure to include an image or video that reflects what you are trying to communicate.  No naked gyms or blog posts.
• Include your Lab 1 Write Up (with link to your Google Doc uploaded and published as a webpage).
• DUE: For Monday Lab - before Lab 2 begins.
• DUE: For Wed. Lab - before Lab 2 begins.

Remember that Sister Harriett will be with us on Monday and Wednesday for our VIRTUS training so please be on time to get the paperwork filled out on time.
Have a great weekend and see some of you on Sunday at the Breast Cancer Fundraiser - Splash for Hope at Greek Peak  Here is the Facebook Event Page for more information.
Here is the presentation we covered in class and its an important document for future reference: