PE Wiki

By the way, as part of my National Boards, I created a PE Wiki to share with my colleagues many different ideas. I have been busily updating the wiki with some of my favorite activities that really get my students involved and moving. Please feel free to check it out and if you have anything to add to it, please let me know.

Check it out:

https://shorelinepe.wikispaces.com/

The Year Ahead

Thanks to everyone that has checked out my Blog! It looks like this is definitely a way for me to communicate with my parents, students, and everyone else out there that cares about physical education.

An update on the upcoming school year: At this point in time, my school district has placed me in a 5th grade classroom. I hope to get some time in the gym to continue working on my National Boards in Physical Education/Health, but it is still up in the air if they will find me any time in the gym.

If I am lucky enough to get back in the gym, I hope to continue building on this blog. I had hoped to become much more active in communicating with everyone. Only time will tell.

Thanks again for your support!

Is anyone out there?

This is the time of year when I like to take a good look at what I am doing in my job and begin picking out the good and the not so good. Right now, I am getting some positive feedback about the Ram PE newsletter that I have been putting together this year. Now I am real curious as to what people are thinking about our PE blog. I meant for the blog to be a place where parents and I could communicate about the PE program at Ridgecrest and together we could build a stronger program. So my question is out there...is anyone listening? What would you like to see in the RAM PE Blog? What useful information would you like to get about your son or daughters PE classes? What could make this experiment more meaningful for you?

Please post any and all ideas. Or at least just say hello...I am listening.

Thanks,

Allyn Woods

On to Jump Roping....

Well, our quick golf unit concluded on Monday. The kids did a marvelous job learning the techniques and strategies for putting, chipping over the rough, and driving the ball for long distances. Many of our students realized how difficult golf really can be. I saw a ton of improvement and lots of enthusiastic faces throughout the unit. I can't say enough about how proud I am of our students for trying so many new activities. A huge thank needs to go out to Joe P., our First Tee of America golf instructor and father of two of our wonderful Ridgecrest kids. Thank you!!!

Now we move on to a jump roping unit. Jump roping is one of those activities that I find students either love or despise. I know that when I was a students I disliked jump roping to a great extent. Unfortunately, that led me to being a pretty terrible jump roper. Needless to say, I have learned a few things since then and I strive to make jump roping fun for even our struggling students. This year we are starting off with the basics of jump roping as we assess one another on the 4 cues of jump roping (elbows in, head up, land on the balls of the feet, and move your wrists in small circles). As we all get more comfortable with ourselves jumping through a our rope we will begin to challenge one another with twists, crosses, dance steps, and many different maneuvers sure to engage and challenge even the slowest jumpers. My goal for this unit it threefold. #1. I would like each student to improve their jump roping ability. #2. I would like each student to be challenged. #3. I would like each student to enjoy their time during this unit.

That's all for now. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns,

Thanks,

Allyn Woods

Tired Kids

After a much longer Winter Break than we had anticipated, the Ridgecrest gym is getting right back into the swing of things. This week, being a strange week with all of the half days for teacher conferences, I thought I would see what sort of shape our kids are in after being away from school and everything that school entails (recess, PE, socializing with friends). I have been pushing the kids with running and tagging games all week and have been seeing some hot, tired, and red faces as they leave. Some students can hardly complete the 30 minutes of PE time without asking for a break or a trip to the water fountain. In fact, I have had a few classes that have had to stop early because so many of the kids just can't handle any more movement. I wonder how many families out there are able to participate in activities on their own outside of school. I wonder how many kids are signed up for basketball this season. I wonder how many families have had a chance to check out the brand new Shoreline YMCA over on 99 by Costco. I have heard that it is beautiful and offers a ton of exciting programs for kids and adults. I wonder how many parents exercise with their kids. I know that I have struggled mightily to get outside and do something over the break. It is evident that some of our students have to.

What ways have you found to get your kids active?
Are you able to be active with your kids every day or at least once a week?

Baseball in January...

Our students have been doing a marvelous job over the course of the past few weeks. We have officially completed our basketball unit and we saw great improvement across the board. More specifically, I noticed that our intermediate grades did a tremendous job working on their shooting skills. They took many of the cues that I spoke about in class and used them during our practice times. I saw some amazing progress. Today we are in the middle of one of the student's favorite units, throwing. Last week we worked primarily on accuracy using the underhand throw. This week we challenge ourselves with the overhand throw and work on our power and distance. Our kids sure love to throw...doesn't matter what the object is.

A big thank you needs to go out to one of our readers. She noticed that our listing for little league was for Richmond Little League, but that students from our side of the district actually play through North King County Little League, www.NKCLL.org. She also told me, "Sign ups have just started for the 2009 season. They will run through the end of January. February is tryouts for ages 9-14, and practices will start at the first of March. Please encourage all your kids to sign up as the league offers programs for ages 5 - 14, baseball, softball, t-ball, and also challenger for kids with disabilities." Thanks for the information!

Please let me know if I can add anything new to the blog or to our newsletter.

Sincerely,

Allyn Woods

Including the Community into the Gym

We have a wonderful community surrounding us here at Ridgecrest. We have an amazing PTA that supports our teachers and students. We have a Parks Department and YMCA that run programs for people of all different ages and backgrounds. We have tons of parks with running trails, walking tracks, skateboard ramps, and playing fields. We have businesses that donate time, materials, and money to many of our school causes. And we have athletic programs that love to share their materials and time to promote themselves as well as their area of expertise.

I love having programs such as the First Tee of American or Spin Alley provide curriculum as well as materials to our PE program each year. It opens up many more possibilities for things that our students might find that they love. It also promotes activities that are close to each of our students as they come from locations mainly in the city of Shoreline.

The First Tee of America (golf) and Spin Alley (bowling) have been a fantastic addition to our PE program. I am always looking for more ideas of programs that would offer their time and materials to allow our students to experience new things. If you know of a program that might fit our needs, please let me know. Or if there is something that you would like me to look into, please offer suggestions.

Thanks,

Allyn Woods