Today we began to do some Yoga this year at Assumption School. We first tried this out last year and we did a few Yoga Challenges for a couple of months to see how many days of Yoga you could do in a month and some of our students nearly made every day in a month. This year I have started it for every Tuesday and Thursday from 8:10 - 8:40. I use the great app "Yoga Studio" as my instructor as I am not nearly qualified to be teaching yoga. The app has beginner, intermediate, and advanced workouts and for $5 comes with over 30 workouts. Workouts are 15, 30, and 60 minutes long and include strength, balance, flexibility, and combinations. Today we had 6 students from grade 2-9 and I look forward to seeing it grow as time goes on. It is a fantastic start to the day.
I haven't made a post in here in a while but I have just found some incredible new things that I will be bringing into my Physical Education classes this year. In the past I have found it difficult to accurately assess students in my class aside from getting them to perform skills in closed and open situations. I use prior knowledge from what I have learned through teaching and reading about students of each age group. I have recently found the PLAY (Physical Literacy Assessment for Youth) Resources done by Canada's Sport for Life Society. The PLAY Assessments clearly define each fundamental movement skill as well as some fundamental sport skills into four categories (Initial, Emerging, Competent, and Proficient). This is really useful for myself to properly assess students in Physical Education. Parents can also use the PLAYparent Assessment to assess their children at home and see what they can do in order to help them progress and become more physically literate which in turn will allow them the opportunity to be active for life and contribute to a healthy lifestyle. Students can also use the PLAYself resource in order to allow them to tell parents, teachers, and coaches a little about how they view themselves in regards to physical activity. I will be using the PLAYfun and PLAYbasic resources in my class, as well as getting the students to fill out the PLAYself resources in order to guide my teaching into a more productive learning environment.
The boys were so happy about this win that I had to post it in the blog. I don't normally post sports results in here but this one was special. The boys came to Brooks with a short side of only 6 players which made for a really tough game. Keaton Fougere, who had a stellar game, had to leave after the 3rd quarter so he could be on time for his soccer practice. The boys were playing a very tight defense, grabbing lots of rebounds and not letting anyone get shots off that were uncontested. We found ourselves up by 4 points with only 4 minutes to go and Brooks was applying the pressure to go for the win. With only 30 seconds to go Brooks had fought hard for a couple of points to tie the game up and the Assumption team was in a bit of a desperate situation. The ball was worked down court and ended up in the hands of Dustin Fair, who was able to put up a jump shot from inside the 3 point arc. The shot was good with only 10 seconds left. The Brooks team had another chance to work the ball down the court only to be denied by the stellar defense of the Assumption team and the boys tasted the sweet victory of a 22-20 game. The boys have been practicing hard and playing some tough games to improve their skills in order to win the game on Thursday. Great efforts by Mark Silvey, Chase Colquhoun, Savraj Bains, Hunter Peters, Dustin Fair, and Keaton Fougere. I look forward to coaching many more games with this group. They play hard while winning and losing, their dedication goes beyond the practice times, and they play as a team.
I am not actually teaching Math but I still have a great passion for it. My passion for math lead me to read Jo Boaler's book, "What's Math Got to Do With". It inspired me to create a website, "Mr.Thorsell's Math" for students, parents, and teachers to access in order to gain information about giving the best mathematical start to children. Most of my information will come directly from Jo Boaler's books as well as her website YouCubed. So be sure to check that website out as it is far more beneficial than mine. I will post many ideas from different areas as I read more books and visit more websites. Have fun visiting my website and have fun visiting YouCubed.
There is still so much to do on the website and I will be working on it over the next month or more but I figured i would put something out there and see if I get any visitors. I am already seeing an increase in visitors here which is really exciting. I hope that people are getting what they needed out of it in terms of being able to give your child the best physical start. This website is constantly under construction as well because I am always learning new things. I was just reading a great blog by my social media friend Joey Feith about Backwards Design Pro-D for himself. You can read the blog here. He is an amazing teacher and a mentor for me but like myself he is human, we make mistakes every day, but it is how we deal with those mistakes, how we reflect on it, and how we approach the situations the next time that we come around them that makes us better. I, like him, want to be the best PE teacher I can be for my students because they deserve it. Every child should leave Assumption School feeling physically literate and ready to be healthy and active for the rest of their lives. Give his article a read and check out the links he provides. If you are like me, you will be looking to contribute along with the rest of the online community of PE teachers. Come forward great teachers and fitness professionals, collaborate, and let's get better together, for a brighter, healthier future.
I have just listened to two podcasts done by Olaniyi Sobomehin (@niyisobo). He is an ex-NFL RB for the New Orlean Saints. His brand imnotyou.com speaks directly to the young and the competitive who are looking to take their game and life to the next level. Both podcasts were unique in their own way since one was from the Youth Soccer Evolution podcast and the other was from the Conquering Manhood podcast. But in the end both podcasts put forth the same general message. That message was that you need to decide what you want to do and go out and do it. Set goals and conquer those goals each day, don't go in it halfway. If you want to achieve anything, set your mind to it and go out and achieve it. He followed what he called the BEAR acronym. B was for beliefs, you need to believe in yourself, in your ability, in the ability to achieve something as long as you set your mind to it and go out and work for it each and every day. Belief leads into the E for Emotions, and once you feel a certain way it leads into the A and that is for what kind of Action you take in order to achieve your beliefs. And whether you are taking good action is what will lead to the R for Results. So if you are not achieving results you really have to start from the bottom with your beliefs. Your beliefs will unlock your full potential if you can believe that you can achieve anything.
One of the things that he does with his athletes is ask them to envision that they are in a confession and then ask them "what is holding you back from achieving your results, or why don't you have the results that you want?" And you will have to get them to be completely honest with themselves. And you may get answers like "I'm not fast enough, I'm not motivated, I have too much pressure" and if they are completely honest then you will find all of their beliefs about why they are not achieving their results. They need to change those beliefs into things like, as long as I do something every day in order to better myself in that, I will eventually be able to achieve that. Some people will believe that they cannot do things just because people have told them that they are a certain way, or cannot do something. If you want to be successful and dominate you need to ask yourself two questions. "What do I want?" and "How do I get it?" If you think you have limitations like you are too short, too small, too fat, not fast enough, not smart enough, then those beliefs will crush you. You need to believe that there is no limitation, that you have all the resources necessary to achieve your goals. Don't let anyone tell you that your dream is too big, they don't know what you are capable of when you believe you can do something. Change your beliefs from limitations to motivations that empower you. Start believing in yourself every day. Olaniyi starts his day with a Morning Mastery, this is on his website. You can follow something like this to start your day off right or create your own morning routine that will get you pumped up for the day. Take every opportunity to become better and optimize it. If you're an athlete, then go to every practice, every game with the intent to do your absolute best. You need to bring the same intensity to every practice that you want to show in a game. Identify the feeling that you need to have the best practice of your life. You might want to feel "unstoppable, focused, highly energetic, optimistic". Once you know this do 3 things before practice. Ask yourself "If I was already feeling these feelings, what would I look like?", then you stand like that, put on that facial expression, etc. Then ask yourself "If I was feeling like this what would I be thinking about?", then start thinking about things that you would be thinking about if you were unstoppable, maybe you are taking on a defender, scoring a goal, making a great tackle, laughing and having a great time with my teammates etc. Then ask yourself "If I was feeling like this what kind of language would I use?" and start using language and words that empower you like I'm gonna kill it out here, nobody can stop me, I'm gonna rock this workout etc. Even if you're feeling tired and you didn't get much sleep the night before, get yourself psyched up by using this, start focusing on the things that are going to go right. This can go into any area in life. If you feel scared and nervous about a big test, then start using self-talk, and tell yourself that you are going to kill it on the test, the answers are going to come to you at the right time, you've studied for this, you know this. Olaniyi is very motivational. He is an online coach as well so if you really wanted his services then go to his website imnotyou.com and register to sign up. Beware though, he doesn't just take anyone. He only wants to train people that want to become professional athletes, not people that will settle for being mediocre. I highly advise listening to these podcasts for athletes, parents, coaches, and teachers. I purchased a Fitbit Charge HR this summer so I could let some students and parents know whether I thought it was a worthwhile purchase. It was $180 online at fitbit.com. The fitbit has a few different uses.
It is a watch - I don't normally wear a watch but since this one is for my health and really it just looks like a small rubber band, I'm okay with it. I hardly notice it and I rarely take it off unless I am showering, swimming, or charging it. It is a pedometer - I have noticed that it is fairly accurate for the amount of steps I take, and it can be very insightful into if I had received enough activity that day. I have set my goal to 15,000 steps per day and I achieve it on most days. It is a nice achievable goal for myself because sometimes I will hit over 30,000 but some days I will have to push myself to get out the door and gain those last 1000 steps to achieve my goal. It is a heart rate monitor - I have used this in some instances for when I play soccer, or sometimes when I am doing activity in the gym and wonder if I have actually done enough to raise my heart rate to get some moderate to vigorous activity during my work day. I can check the graphs through my iPhone app very easily and monitor my workouts and daily activities. It is a distance tracker - I don't use this piece as much. A runner or walker might find this piece motivating but I am mostly involved in sports for my activities and distances are not totally motivating for me. Although there is this great website called Active Globe where you could put your stats into it and you could set a goal to walk/run from here to New York, or Chile, or wherever and it would add your distances up from each day and you could watch your path over to New York and down to Chile and see how long that would take you in the amount of activity you do each day. This could be very motivating to some people. It is a calorie counter - This is also useful if you are wondering whether you should eat a little bit extra tonight or a little less depending on the amount of calories you have burned that day. On days that I walk 30,000 steps and do activity from 8am to 9pm, I need to eat a little extra in order to sustain myself. It monitors your sleep - If you leave it on at night, it can tell you when you went to sleep, when you were restless, and when you were awake in the night. I find this one especially useful because sometimes I will be in bed for 8 hours but I was awake or restless for over an hour. I wake up still feeling tired and no longer wonder why. I have heard about people linking their activity and meals to their sleep each night and figuring out what works best for them and what amount of activity and nutrition and when leads to a better nights sleep. One thing that I really wish it had is an accelerometer that tracks your speed when you run. You can do this if you carry your iPhone with you but I don't like to bring my phone when I run. I also have a Polar M400 watch that does this and is excellent but the heart rate monitor is a chest strap so it is hard to use while playing soccer and it is expensive. I found the Polar M400 really motivating while running because I wanted to have faster runs, or hit overall top speeds but I am still yet to find something that has everything that the Fitbit does, as well as the accelerometer. Let me know if you know of anything out there. All in all, I think it is a great purchase. I hope this helps with anyone that is on the fence about buying this. I had added a bunch of apps last year but I haven't added many since then. Swork it Kids is a great app for kids that don't really know what they should be doing at home in terms of strength, agility, balance and flexibility. You can set it to a timer for anywhere from 5-60 minutes so you can use it as a warm up or as a work out in itself. Each exercise is shown on a video for 30 seconds while you copy the movement, and then it will switch to a new exercise. You can pause it anywhere in the workout to go and get a drink or you can skip the exercise if you don't feel comfortable doing it. You can also create your own workouts with the library of exercises that are included in the app. This app also allows you to enter your current weight and it will calculate about how many calories you should have burned while completing the workout. You can also set reminders at a certain time of day to remind you to workout, and you can get it to remind you when you haven't worked out for more than 2 days. This might just be the motivation you need to get going more often.
If parents or teens wanted to give this a go or just for some variation, there is a little more challenging app called Swork It. This has a few more moves, and some moves that might not be suitable for younger kids with weaker muscle structure and skeletal system. The only downside to these videos is there is no instruction on whether or not some of the moves are being done correctly so just beware of certain things like: keeping your heels on the ground while squatting trying to keep your knees from pointing inwards (valgus) while squatting probably hold off on the one legged squats until you are very comfortable squatting with two legs. try to keep the back as straight as possible while squatting when jumping try to land softly on the ground there are a few others but you should be fairly safe with those. |
AuthorPE Teacher, Coach, Fitness Specialist Archives
April 2020
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