Reflection 5

General reflection on class:

• My expectations of the course going in, were that I was going to learn the intricacies of what causes movement within the human body, and that we were going to do peer-teaching exercises. Peer-teaching exercises would be, so we could get experience applying the motor development concepts to actual teaching practical activities (with other students being assigned to us and have us teach them). Maybe an idea would be doing the stages of learning in teaching practicals. The expectations I had were almost met, as we received more detailed knowledge about how the inside of the human body governs movement, and we also received the additional knowledge about how to teach someone that is learning motor skills and sport skills, the only thing we did not do as a class was teaching practical exercises. Some of the interesting concepts to me were: Part versus Whole Practice, Enhanced Expectancies, External Focus of Attention, and the Cognitive, Associative, and Autonomous Stages of Learning. I put the portfolio in digital format, on a wordpress.com webpage, grouped in a way that would be easy to navigate and search through when I reference the information later.

 

Baseline writing performance to Midterm to Final writings:

• Improvements in time were made on the longer writing tasks like the alphabet and sample sentence. I made improvements in legibility in all of my printing exercises with my non-dominant hand (my non-dominant hand is left hand). I was surprised that I was able to improve my ability to draw pictures with my left hand. I was surprised that I could actually write letters clearer and more legibly by the end of the semester. I worked on not doing a “death-grip” on the pencil, and working on relaxing the degree of tension in my arm and wrist. To make even larger improvements I could have not “tried too hard” and could not have “concentrated until my head hurt”. Since I was surprised by my ability to draw pictures with my non-dominant hand improving from the doing the writing exercises, I believe I am more likely to try something new in the future, thing is, I do not know what “that new thing” is yet. Other ways of tracking performance on the writing exercises, could have included writing a short one-page letter to someone you know in your non-dominant hand.

 

Final thoughts about class and in the real world.

• I am working in and toward the fields of basketball, volleyball, and archery coaching, and teaching physical education, with working in schools at the college and professional levels. My dream is to coach basketball and volleyball both at the college-university level, or if I coach professional level, to coach basketball. Motor Development covered learning stages, feedback schedules, how to better improve the learning progress of students executing motor skills and sport skills. Many topics in the Motor Development course are applicable to coaching and teaching.