Thoughts: Promising Practices

Key Note Speaker:

Dana Fusco had me intrigued by her presentation. I learned a lot from her about a child’s development, and I noticed that I could agree with her because I liked my after school program better than school as a child. She stated many things that help a teacher understand the process behind a child and what they want from you. She stated things that caught my attention, like

Asian and Native American children found after school not efficient

While Latinos and blacks did

Girls like school hours better rather than after school

Age has much to do with why adolescents would prefer school or after school better

The older the child/higher the grade the more interested in after school program then in school

Older kids find something more efficient in after school

As a kid growing up, I could tell you that this is true. Because I preferred after school programs a hundred times before school. For the simple fact that a teachers attention is more on getting you to learn something in after school, from how it is in the daily classroom where that teacher has to teach 20 students, sometimes more at the same time. A teacher can’t stop her lesson to single handedly help one kid. I learn more hands on, I like things being showed to me, or giving me examples to help understand. When you’re in a classroom attention drifts, and you’re no longer sitting in that classroom your mind is thousands of miles away. In an after school program I was always intrigued by the hands on experience, the one on one conversation about the lesson.

Dana Fusco gave me insight on a child’s mind on why they preferred after school to school, kids said:

That there are better relationships with faculty

Hands on activities

Culminating events that celebrate achievements

I appreciate this information because it’s good for people to know this, especially a teacher because maybe this would help them build their classroom around a child’s preferred way of feeling or learning. She said in the presentation, that a child likes after school programs because they feel that “what they’re doing matters, and what they’re feeling matters”, and I believe that’s the truth.

While listening to her, I learned a lot about youth development and its importance. Especially its importance in places like New York. Where, a lot of kids are being deprived from important parts of education. I honestly give big kudos to Dana Fusco for doing what she does.

My first workshop: Teaching Social Studies through Zumba Dance

I chose my workshops around movement, because I know how important movement is in a classroom full of 7 year old's. I work around 7 year old's every day and they are HYPER! All day they have a big surge of energy that never goes away. It just so happens, that my facilitator for the workshop is the teacher I work with. First I want you to know how successful she is, which I didn’t know until Promising Practices. I didn’t doubt her, but I didn’t think her achievements went that deep.

“Kristen Vito-Silva is a first grade teacher at Henry Barnard School. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education with an English concentration from RIC. She has a Masters of Art Degree in special education from PC. She is a graduate of the National Geographic Teaching Alliance and a Fullbright scholar who had conducted education research in Japan and Australia. She is also a certified Childlight yoga instructor.”

This workshop was interesting, Mrs. Vito-Silva and her student teacher Tiffany Giusti, last year integrated zumba into learning social studies with their class. Tiffany is a zumba instructor so she brought up the cool idea to do this with the kids. Mrs. V loved the idea, and they worked on choosing a continent with the kids, and worked with making dances for different places with music to go with it. They showed the kids in a series of steps so they wouldn’t get lost.

Visual

Auditory

Kinesthetic

Tactile

These are good way to do all of this:

1. Examine grade level core curriculum and teaching content. Look for overlaps/connections

-teach new movement and then address the language arts objective of teaching “steps in a process”

-as you teach movement in conjunction teach science lessons based upon “the human body.” Topics such as muscles, the circulatory system and the respiratory work well.

2. Think about ways to integrate movement into your curriculum

-math, occupational therapy, geography, music history, language arts.

-examples: obstacle course, ball toss, tray work

3. Use your resources

-gym teacher

-parents

The reasons behind all of this is the great part.

1. Addresses obesity

2. Improves memory

3. Natural act for children

4. Improves brain function

5. Helps manage emotions

6. Builds self esteem

7. Establishes new leaders

8. Community building

I wish I could share everything the packet we were given said, because I learned a lot from it. But overall, the main thing I learned was that movement takes a big part in a child’s life. It helps them relax; it helps keep them with their head in the work. It’s a great way to address many problems in our society with just one thing.. dance.

(Good Video!)

These are pictures of the kids showing their moves step by step, and the work they did on muscles while learning movement.

This is a child's writing without prior movement

This is the same child's work after movement

Another child's without prior movement

And this is the same child after movement

And this is an actual video of the kids doing zumba in Mrs.V’s class last year.

The following pictures are of the kids showing their zumba moves step by step.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

These other pictures are of what the kids learned about muscles, and the body. The one on the right, is the survey answers of one of the kids after there whole lesson on zumba.

My second workshop: Kinesthetic Connection for Middle School Aged Students

This workshop was with Professor Johnson, Professor Cummings and Professor Pepin who are all part of the Physical Education Undergrad Program. They are awesome professors! This workshop was wonderful, there was so much moving around and talking. They had music on, and high five games. I’ve never been in a class where the teachers/professors randomly say get up let’s get moving. It was pretty exiting to learn how important things like that are in a classroom. If my teachers throughout elementary to high school did those kinds of things I would have been a less pain in the butt. I was and still am one of those kids that could never be still for too long, when I’m sitting for too long just listening to someone talk I don’t hear half of it. My mind has been to Jupiter and back before I hear anything the teacher has said. I’ve never like being still as a kid, I always had something in my hands, colored, drew on my paper, or was always shaking my leg under the desk when I was stuck in a classroom without moving an inch.

In the workshop I learned that physical activity increases kids test scores. Today there taking away recess to get kids to have higher test scores, and there not getting those results because that doesn’t work.

I learned how joining in with students as a teacher, and making good relationships with your kids helps the classroom become one. Doing this makes the kids comfortable, they participate more, in class the students are more open, and they enjoy coming.

Physical activity builds: