In my experiences I have not had much experience with texts in my discipline outside of instructional charts or textbooks in my grade school years. In physical education classes assessments were mostly skill based and there was little other texts other ten the charts that showed how to perform cues. In the schools I went to there was unfortunately not a great emphasis on health. It occurred for a couple weeks in elementary school and consisted f one semester in three years of middle school, and one more semester in 4 years of high school. There was no additional health courses offered. In all those health classes the only text used was the textbook. In the years since I have started college I have had the opportunity to encounter so many more texts for both contents. I sometimes feel cheated of a better experience and want to make sure my future students don't encounter the same feelings. In my free time I read many sports related children's books, and have always had a fascination with the motivational messages many of them carry. When I was in Little League baseball my team won the city championship one year, and as a gift to us our coaches and parents bought all of us personalized books that had us as a character in the story. Although looking back now it was a super cheesy story, at the time I thought it was such a cool thing. It was a motivational force in my continuing participation in physical education. In the secondary grade many students probably wouldn't be motivated by fictional children's stories, but another source of inspiration in my life may prove to be more useful in improving the education experience of my students. I was kind of a weird child and really enjoyed reading biographies of people. It consisted of historical figures in American history and sports stars mostly. I can recommend certain athletes stories to students that i feel could be inspirational for that student. I can also suggest reading materials on specific sports that a studentys has interest in to help enrich their knowledge of that area.
Hi AJ: I think that in health, the sky is really the limit in terms of really neat apps and texts you can choose. Personally, I like magazines for disciplines like health and PE because I think a lot of health-conscious people read magazines to maintain their health. I know Men's Health and Women's Health are magazines with some questionable content for youth, but scholastic has some high-interest health magazines written for middle and high school students, such as this one:
ReplyDeletehttp://choices.scholastic.com/
Thanks for your posting! You seem like the kind of teacher that a lot of students will connect with.