After observing many students at St. Mary’s I believe that both age and gender play a role in a child’s ability to perform certain motor skills. First my group started out with everyone in the gym. We started to observe kindergarteners and first graders. One girl in particular we watched was a five-year-old kindergartener named Casey. Right away I noticed that she was able to run and hop, but struggled when she was asked to gallop. She was standing in a lunge position and just jumping forward. There was no transfer of weight. Someone explained to her what she should be doing when she galloped and she was able to correct it. By the end of the day she was able to gallop properly. I also noticed a difference in the performance of the girls and boys in the gym. The boys wanted to do everything really fast. They ran and galloped as fast as they could. The girls were more relaxed and just performed the skill because they had to.
After being in the gym with the kindergarteners and first graders, my group moved into the pre-kindergarten room. These students ranged in age from two years old to four years old. Theresa was a very small two-year-old who my entire group could not help but notice. She was much smaller than the other students. We watched them in their classroom and walked them down the hall to wash their hands before snack. She just wanted to run everywhere. She scuffed her shoes on the ground and twisted her body as she moved. Age definitely played a factor in the pre-kindergarten group. Theresa tried so hard to keep up with the other students including her four-year-old brother. After snack we took them into the gym where they ran wild. We set up and obstacle course that incorporated some of the skills that we were observing before. Once again the boys wanted to run and do everything as fast as they possibly could. The girls did not nearly go as fast as the boys. One boy, Nicholas, did not stop moving he was constantly running around.
Finally, while everyone was in the gym we could observe the oldest group of students as well. They were able to perform a hop, gallop, and run with no problem and as expected were the fastest. Age and gender did play a role in the skills that we observed. One thing Dan suggested was that dance was something all the students could do well. At the end all the students did the chicken dance. If someone were to walk into the gym at that time, besides size, there would be no indication that the students were all different ages. All of them could dance the chicken dance at the same level.
Right away when we walked into St. Mary’s everyone could see that the children were wild. It was the first day of school after having a week off so they were very crazy. The first group to teach was the Barnyard Chase group. Right away they were trying to get the attention of the students. For a brief period they were quiet and one of the group members instructed the students to stand around the parachute but not to touch it and wait for additional instructions. That was a lot to ask of the kindergarten and first graders who were so excited when they saw the parachute. In my opinion the students should have stayed seated and listened to all the directions before going near the parachute because right away the kids started shaking the parachute. At that point it was almost impossible to hear the directions and regain control. The group was successful in changing the activity and had more control over the students. I thought that was well done being able to change the activity on the fly.
My group was in charge of the Zany Zoo game. Right away we split the kids up into smaller groups with one of our group members as a group leader. Then we started to give directions. I thought this worked well because we just randomly placed kids at a corner and they were not with their friends all the time. This also proved to be effective because with a group leader standing right with them and being able to control the kids quicker and reminding them not to talk. We were able to decrease the student to teacher ratio from about 25:1 to about 6:1. When the kids were sitting down, one member of our group stood in the center and gave directions. The kids seemed to pay a little more attention and remained quieter in smaller groups and when they were not touching anything.
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