Cup Stacking and Hantis!!

                Yesterday Dave and Kyle were the last of the class to go for teaching their Lab D lesson for EDU 255. Dave got us all started off with his Cup Stacking lesson! I was really excited to try this out because I have never gotten a chance to use the actual cup stacking cups and I have seen lots of videos of the Cup Stacking Championships.  I really like the instant activity that Dave made up. He had everyone get a partner and there was a stack of cups along the edges of the gym and with our partner we had to take cup by cup to the center of the gym doing a different locomotor skill. Then once we got to the middle we had to make the 6 cup tower and once it was complete he wanted us to do the downward dog yoga pose. He began to talk to us about cup stacking while we all did a few different yoga poses. I really like the way he did this because this caused everyone to be active while he was explaining what we were doing for the day. Then we got into the actual cup stacking! We started out by just working on the technique of how to separate the cups with our fingers like laces on a football. Slowly we progressed to using these neat timing mats and building a 3-6-3 tower. Dave also had challenges throughout his lesson, like try it with your eyes closed or try using the mini cups! Then Dave had the challenge of incorporating relationships into his lesson and I loved the way he did this! He had us all paired up and we had to work together to build one tower, one person acted as the left hand and the other person acted as the right hand. While we were doing this he talked about how there can be hard times (when the cups tip over) so we must learn to communicate and work together. Overall I though Dave did a great job for his Lab D lesson! I had a lot of fun the whole time and he kept us all engaged and interested for the whole time!

                Next Up was Kyle! Kyle was teaching Hantis and you could tell that he was really confident in what he was teaching. He had us warm up with table tennis but playing with our hands instead of paddles. He used scaffolding from Eric’s Lesson, which is a great technique! After table tennis he brought us all together to talk about the objectives of his lesson and as discussed facts about asthma. We then moved right into practicing proper Hantis form. The unique thing about his lesson that I liked is that he handed out sheets of paper with cues and asked us to peer teach each other. I enjoyed this because it was a different teaching style we haven’t seen yet! Eventually we moved into small Hantis games and then a full 4 table Hantis game. During the lesson Kyle was very aware because he had a feeling something was going on because Professor Yang had Mike put another shirt on. This was great that he was being very observant because Mike ended up “breaking” his arm. Kyle handled the situation very well by asking someone to call 911, someone to stay in the hallway to wait, and someone to stay with Mike on the side. He also tried to keep the class engaged in the lesson and not have them concentrate on the incident with Mike. Kyle’s lesson was very well organized and flowed smoothly from one part to the next. Also you could tell that he was very organized and was confident in what he was teaching. These are two really important elements for a teacher to have. Even though it was the last day for our Lab D lessons, I would definitely say it ended on a good note. Everyone in our class has grown so much since day 1 thanks to Professor Yang and our TAs!