Elizabeth Osantowski and Kayla Rolling

PTH 655

Teaching Activity Paper

Section 1: Needs Assessment

For our Teaching and Learning project, we are responsible for teaching the

importance of exercise to a group of children in the Summer Specialty Camp. Our

learners are a group of 12 children aged three to four years old (11 boys and 1 girl) with

varying degrees of communication difficulties. We expect that our learners will be at a

novice, beginner level, in regard to the topic of exercise, but we expect them to

participate and enjoy the activities we have included in our lesson plan.

We worked with two speech language pathology (SLP) students that were very

helpful in informing us of any unique learning needs that the children may require.

These individuals are verbal and visual learners that benefit from short and simple

directions. The SLP students suggested that we encourage the children by

modeling/demonstrating what we want them to do and utilizing a “core board” when

speaking to the children to promote reading while using a visual. The SLP students also

taught us some basics of American Sign Language to communicate with some of the

children that use it and taught us how one of the children uses their iPad to

communicate. The children did not have any physical restrictions that would interfere

with their ability to participate in our lesson plan. The SLP students also informed us

that it is important to allow time to transition between each activity by using phrases to

remind them of how much time they have left before switching to a new activity.

This information was provided to us by the SLP students before the day we

presented in order to allow us adequate time to prepare for the children. We will utilize

this information to assess the needs of our audience and design a lesson plan that will

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be successful with the children. We will make sure to utilize pictures with words when

communicating to the children and when demonstrating any activity. Additionally, we will

use a given period of time to allow the children to transition from one activity to the

next.

Section 2: Learner Centered Objectives

We made three learning objectives for our teaching presentation, with one in

each domain - cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Our first objective is: at the end of

our session, each child will be able to demonstrate their favorite physical activity with

minimal instructions from SPTs and SLPs in order to exhibit understanding of what

physical activity is. This objective fulfills the psychomotor domain by having the children

perform an exercise and therefore demonstrate a skill. Our second objective is: at the

end of our session, each child will be able to answer questions from SPTs on different

types of physical activity in order to demonstrate their understanding of why exercise is

important. This objective falls under the cognitive domain by encouraging the children to

express their knowledge and recall what they have learned about exercise. Our third

objective is: at the end of our session, each child will be able to rate their emotions

using a 3-point scale (happy, neutral, and sad) in order to express their enthusiasm

towards exercise. This fulfills the affective domain by incorporating their attitude towards

exercise into the objective.

Section 3: Content

Since we are the last group to present, we want to begin our lesson plan by

asking the children what their special friends (previous SPTs) taught them so far about

exercise. We want to use this technique to encourage the children to work on their

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speech so that the SLP students can work on their goals. This also gives us the

opportunity to gather what the children know thus far about the topic. Next, we plan to

briefly assess their understanding of exercise by asking them which of the following is

exercise: sleeping, reading, running, and jumping. If they answer the questions

correctly, we will hand out stickers in order to continue holding their attention. If they do

not answer the questions correctly, we will reassess at the end of our lesson plan to see

the growth in knowledge.

The focus of our lesson plan is to include an exercise for each part of the body

such as arms, legs, body, and heart. We plan to start with the heart by hopping and

then using our catch phrase “place your hand over your heart! Can you feel it beating

fast? That means you’re exercising!” Next, we are going to play the “airplane song” and

pretend to be flying around like airplanes. We will then reuse our catch phrase and

explain to the children that they were working their arms. Following arms, we will move

onto legs by forming two single lines and holding onto the rope. Kayla will lead one rope

and Liz will lead the other rope. We intend to pretend to be a train- making train noises

and walking around the room. After we complete this, we are going to gather around the

carpet and explain how that is working our legs. Next, we are going to work our core

muscles by playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” while pretending to be boats and

explain how it is working our abdominal muscles. Then, we intend to end with the “Stop

and Go” song as a full body workout using a printed “stop” and “go” sign (see Figure 1).

We would like to ask the children to sit down and one by one show us what their favorite

exercise is. Upon answering, they will receive a sticker. Lastly, we want to end circle

time with stretching and deep breathing to calm the children back down.

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We intend to wrap up our session with coloring in a picture of the human body

with a heart as seen in Figure 2, to allow time to reflect on how they just worked each

part of their body. The SLP students were informed of this game plan ahead of time to

be able to help us work with each of the children and reflect while coloring. Upon

completing their picture, they will turn it in to Liz or Kayla to receive a Paw Patrol sticker.

At the very end of our session, we will ask each of the children if exercise makes them

happy, neutral, or sad using the 3-point scale as shown in Figure 3.

If any of our lesson plan does not work, we will have several backup plans. Our

first backup plan is going to be the “Wheels on the Bus” song if music works for the

children. Our second backup plan is for Liz and Kayla to pretend to be a bridge and

have each child run under us. Our third backup plan is to play Simon Says with different

exercises. When planning our lesson plan, we wanted to ensure that we had enough

content to last the entire session and had several last-resort options in case something

did not work.

Our lesson plan seeks to incorporate information they were taught thus far and

build off of it. With being the last presentation, we wanted to ensure we were connecting

prior learning to our session and integrating the goals that the SLP students needed to

meet as well. We plan to chunk our information by each body part with exercise and

music and then utilize reflection during coloring time to help them remember what we

taught them. We also plan to use demonstration and modeling to teach our group and

help them remember the information by performing the exercises.

Our sources for the information we are teaching include collaboration with the

SLP students, SLP professor, and YouTube for the songs. Additionally, we were

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inspired by the “Kids Educational Games” YouTube channel for the idea of working

each body part and we used the kidshealth.org website for the “Row, Row, Row Your

Boat” idea.

Figure 1 - Stop and Go sign

Figure 3 - 3-point happiness scale

Figure 2 - Picture to color in

Sources:
1. Exercises for different parts of the body, Jumping, Stretching, Aerobics, Funny
Games for Kids [video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5VMThf0sM4&t=169s. Published
September 9, 2014. Accessed July 8, 2019.
2. Gavin, ML. Fitness and Your 2- to 3- Year Old. Kids Health for Nemours Website.
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/fitness-2-3.html. Updated May 2019. Accessed
July 8, 2019.
3. Gavin, ML. Fitness and Your 3- to 5- Year Old. Kids Health for Nemours Website.
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/fitness-4-5.html?WT.ac=p-ra. Updated June
2019. Accessed July 8, 2019.
4. Care.com Editorial Staff. Fun Indoor Exercises for Preschoolers (3-5 Years Old).
Care.com Website. https://www.care.com/c/stories/10369/fun-indoor-exercises-
for-preschoolers-3-5-years-old-guide-to-childrens-exercise/. Published March 12,
2018. Accessed July 8, 2019.
5. Physical activity guidelines for children (under 5 years). NHS Website.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/physical-activity-guidelines-children-under-
five-years/. Updated July 10, 2018. Accessed July 8, 2019.

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Section 4: Motivational Hook

Some motivational hooks that we plan to use with our young children include

music, stickers, and a catch phrase. Our first motivational hook will be music, which we

plan to incorporate into the majority of our lesson plan. We will use songs that go along

with their theme of the week (transportation) to grasp the attention of our audience. Our

next motivational hook will be the use of Paw Patrol stickers during transitional periods

(Figure 4). This is an incentive for them to listen, answer questions, and actively

participate. Our last motivational hook will be using a catch phrase of “alright boys and

girls” to be able to get their attention. This is a phrase that the SLP students use often in

our group to grasp the attention of the children. These ideas will hopefully be effective

for our age group based on their attention span and interests. The SLP students

informed us that these children have very short attention spans, so we expect music,

catch phrases, and Paw Patrol stickers will help hold their attention.

Figure 4 - Paw Patrol Stickers

Section 5: Content Boosters

In order to engage our audience in active learning strategies, we believe our age

group would benefit from numerous types of ideas. First, we want to help encourage

learning and move information from short-term to long-term memory by asking them to

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recall what has been taught by their other special guests. This will allow them to reflect

on the previous weeks’ information and help them store it in their long-term memory.

Secondly, we plan to help the learners rehearse this content by having them answer the

same questions previous groups did on what different types of activities they think are

or are not exercise. Third, we will have the learners actively process the information by

performing exercises we plan to do in our lesson. Fourth, we plan to have the learners

make relevant use of the information and link it to their prior knowledge by asking them

to demonstrate their favorite exercise to us. Lastly, the children will have the opportunity

to demonstrate their learning by taking time to reflect while coloring in the body and

connecting which exercises were performed for each body part. We believe these active

learning strategies will be effective for our 3 to 4-year-old age group based on their

current level of knowledge, attention span, and ability to retain knowledge and

information. Each of our activities use active learning strategies to further expand their

knowledge of the importance of exercise.

Section 6: Formative

An example of formative assessment for our age group is adjusting our plan

based on the feedback and performance we receive from our children. We anticipate

consistently tweaking how we execute our lesson plan based on their initial feedback on

what they think exercise is and throughout the lesson plan dependent upon their

performance. We will constantly ask them questions to assess their knowledge of the

human body and exercise, giving them a pre- and post-test by asking them what

exercise is at the beginning and end of the lesson. We will also use a visual/verbal

survey (3-point happiness scale) to assess whether or not the children express

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PTH 655

enthusiasm towards learning about exercise. We believe these are the best forms of

assessment based on our age group and their knowledge. These formative

assessments will allow us to gather information to determine how well they learned the

information we provided and of how much value it is to them.

Section 7: Summary

Our learners were thoroughly assessed before creating our lesson plan. We met

multiple times with the SLP students who provided us with information on each of the

children and their learning barriers. They also provided us with feedback on our lesson

plan and gave us tips on what may or may not work with our group. Since we weren’t

sure if some of our activities would be successful with our age group, we went to

another group’s presentation to observe. This is where we gathered the most useful

information on our learners to prepare for our teaching day, as we observed many

children not participating or not listening. After brainstorming and talking in the

observation room, the professor chimed in and gave us a few extra ideas and songs to

incorporate. This was very helpful information, as she sees these children everyday. We

think observing the other group was the most useful tool to provide us with the

information we needed before we taught. This experience made us feel much more

prepared prior to teaching.

At the beginning of our lesson plan, the children demonstrated knowing what

exercise was by being able to answer our questions. We stated several different

activities and asked them which ones they thought were exercise. They chose correctly

both at the beginning and end of our session. We then asked the children to

demonstrate their favorite exercise and rewarded those that participated with a sticker.

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PTH 655

This activity engaged the children much more and made each child think and then

perform. In regard to our last objective, at the end of our session, all of the children,

except two, rated exercise as making them feel “happy” using the 3-point scale (Figure

3). The other two children rated it as “neutral.” Since our measurements were able to

successfully get responses from each child, we believe our objectives were attainable

for our learners. The most challenging component in writing objectives for our audience

was the young age, limited knowledge, and communication barriers.

After discussing what we would have done differently in chunking our

information, we concluded that we would have tried to rearrange the structure of our

information if we had to teach this a second time. We would have utilized the beginning

of circle time to explain more in-depth of why exercise is important before trying to use

music to hold their attention better. We also would have chunked all of our musical

components together, followed by stretching. Lastly, we would have liked to ask our

questions before having them color since they were all sitting in the circle rather than

having to go up to each child individually. However, we debated this change because

several children benefit from the one-on-one time when asking questions.

The motivational hooks we used were music, stickers, and a catch phrase. We

used numerous transportation songs to engage the children and help motivate them to

move. We used Paw Patrol stickers to encourage the children to participate in our

activities. Lastly, we used the catch phrase “alright boys and girls” for transitions and to

get their attention since this a phrase the SLP students use daily. We think our hooks

were successful because we were able to get and maintain the attention of most of the

children throughout the entirety of our lesson plan. We were also told by the SLP

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PTH 655

professor that our group had the most participation out of all the other groups who

worked with the 3-4-year-olds. Therefore, we don’t think we would change much of our

motivational hooks, but may consider adding more if we had a next time.

The active learning activities we utilized were asking questions on what they

were taught and why they think exercise is important, performing exercises in our

lesson plan, demonstrating their favorite type of exercise, and using reflection time

during coloring. We think these content boosters were successful, as we were able to

achieve positive responses to each of these. However, we think it could have been

improved if we had a next time by having each child play a game of categorizing

activities vs. exercise and having them explain to us why exercise is important. These

could have strengthened our content boosters to ensure our learners did retain the

information we wanted them to.

The outcomes of our formative assessment were successful since we were able

to alter our lesson plan on a whim, based on the feedback we received from our

children. We anticipated we might need to change our plan, which is exactly what

happened. We had enough backup ideas that we were able to assess how the children

learned best and were able to implement more of those. For instance, music was very

successful, so we implemented one of our backup plans (“Wheels on the Bus” song)

right away for the children before moving to a different activity. Furthermore, we were

constantly asking them questions on different types of exercise, where their heart was

located, and what exercises work different parts of their body. The children were also

able to utilize coloring time to learn on a more personalized level. Lastly, the children

took our 3-point happiness scale survey, which had great outcomes. We feel that these

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were successful with our age group in teaching content to our learners because of the

simplicity of our questions. Therefore, we would not have changed these very much if

we had a second time to teach.

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