Power point presentations

In health class, we are studying drugs. So, I thought the best way to do this was to have the students pick a particular drug and complete a 3 page paper on it. After they complete the paper, they are then going to create a power point presentation on it. The students are in 11th grade and have never completed a power point. I know that they have computer class and speech class, so my question is why they have never done something like this. I know that 4th graders have completed a report with power point before, so why haven't the high school kids? Just wondering if high school computer classes at your schools have this built into the curriculum, or if teachers just add it theirs when they need to?

PE Curriculum

Yesterday, I had a meeting with the school district that we are merging with. We were coming up with a new PE curriculum for next year. It is long and boring, but I guess it is a good experience. There are some things I never knew about health and how much of it that should be taught. The other teacher and I have talked about adding things to the new curriculum, but I don't think they are giving us much to work with. We want to add two days a week of PE, one day in the gym and the other day in the fitness center and that way they could keep both teachers and we can maximize their activity time. I like the idea, but I know that it will never pass, so we are stuck looking at the same old curriculum that was designed 10 years ago.

Wow

I have been teaching at the same school for the last three years. Today, I finally looked at was inside this black box that has been sitting in the same spot at the high school. When I opened it, I found Rebock Heart Rate monitors. I am excited, because I was looking to order them and I had some the entire time. So, all in all, it has been a pretty good day.

pedometers

I have been using pedometers for the last 2 years. I like using them and found that the information that we talked about on Saturday was very intersting. I know that the one company they mentioned was walk4life and was just wondering if anyone had any other companies that they ordered from. I also want to start a walking club and didn't know if anyone knows if anybody is giving away free pedometers, so that way the kids can take them home.

interactive power point

I have a nutrition exam to give next week, and I am thinking about using the interactive power point that we created in technology. I think it will be fun, and that the kids will be interested in the process and even might want to create their own. I liked creating the slides and think that for now on I will use this technique in my P.E. classes. I usually give my 6th and 7th graders a quiz on some things that we are working on, and I think this method would be a lot faster and easier, than having them sit on the floor. Just wondering if anyone has used this in class and whether or not it had a positive outcome.

Recess duty

During the week I have recess duty 2 times. Which isn't bad, but what I don't like is when they put you on recess duty and leave you there to take care of things, just because you are the "gym" teacher. During recess, they let the kids play kickball, dodgeball, and football. I don't agree with some of these things, but I am only covering 2 times a week and each time I am at a different school. I told them that the kids should not be playing some of these games, but they said the kids like to play dodgeball and they are just going to let them go. Well a fight broke out over someone hitting someone else in the chest, so the other girl took the ball and threw it at the other one's face. Well, this made me mad and I took the dodgeballs and locked them up and said not more dodgeball. Now the teachers and parents are upset that I took it away from them. I don't think I am being unfair, but some people said I took it too far. Just wondering if anyone has recess duty and has come across any games or activities that the kids are playing that you don't agree with, and how you might have handled it?

brochures

In health class I assigned the students to chose an eating disorder and to complete a computer generated brochure on it. The students have all had computre classes and I thought that this would be a fun, creative project. I gave them one library class to complete it and save it to a disk and they are to finish and turn it in on Tuesday. Well, easier said then done. I don't understand how these kids can text and play video games, but they can't figure out how to use a template. I don't know if they are really that lazy, or if they just feel that nothing new is worth learning.