Today we played several games with Mr. Vaughn's class in the Large Gym; the games were mostly fun and creative, and I had a really good time playing them.
When we were playing dodgeball with the pins - where we try to knock down other people's pins with dodgeballs and keep ourselves in the game - I noticed a few things that made the game less fun than it might have been. There were a lot of pins put in play in the basketball court - about 20 of them - and they weren't evenly spaced out, so along the sidelines the pins were only about 2 meters from each other. Because the pins were so close, no one want to leave their spot since their pin would get knock over for sure. Everyone ended up standing beside their pins and not really doing anything, and so the game wasn't rotating as fast as it's meant to. Also, it makes it hard for the people waiting to go on to see which pins are emptied. In the end, everyone only got to play in the game about twice.
A good way to improve this game when there are two classes playing it would be to have two smaller fields playing at once. This way it would be easier to space the pins out, and the smaller space gives more chance for the pins to get knocked over and the rotations going. It would also make the knocked over pins easier to be seen. To make things even easier, we can have the people who are out go to the front of the lineup first, so they can tell the people that are waiting to go on before they go to lineup again. If we do these things, I'm confident the game will get a lot more intense and fun for everyone.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Thursday, April 17, 2014
April 17th, Ping Pong (And Helping Out Tony)
Today's choices for P.E were soccer, volleyball, and hockey, none of which was interesting to me; so I tried to get a game of basketball going in the Small Gym, but not a lot of people were interested. Then me, Caleb (Brown), and Will went to set up for Ping Pong; when we were getting the equipments Mr. Neuf asked us to help Tony put away the chairs in the cafeteria, and we said that we would help.
Putting the chairs away took a lot of work. I was amazed at how many chairs were left over from lunch; there were probably 150 of them scattered around the cafeteria - more reason for me to stack the chairs and put them away after luch from now on. After we were done, me, Caleb, Will, and Seth played Ping Pong until class was ending. I was surprised at how good Caleb was; I didn't even know he played Ping Pong.
It wasn't a very exciting day, but I felt good about helping Tony put that gigantic pile of chairs away. I guess that's what they mean by satisfaction from helping others. :)
Putting the chairs away took a lot of work. I was amazed at how many chairs were left over from lunch; there were probably 150 of them scattered around the cafeteria - more reason for me to stack the chairs and put them away after luch from now on. After we were done, me, Caleb, Will, and Seth played Ping Pong until class was ending. I was surprised at how good Caleb was; I didn't even know he played Ping Pong.
It wasn't a very exciting day, but I felt good about helping Tony put that gigantic pile of chairs away. I guess that's what they mean by satisfaction from helping others. :)
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
April 15th, Community Run
Today in the community run I really tried to pace myself to run at an even pace. I felt that I managed to keep myself exerting at a maximum level where I can still sustain myself; I can maintain that pace for at least an hour - not without effort - and if I were to run faster I would exhaust myself much more quickly.
I feel good about the fact that I manage to find and maintain my level of exertion at that balancing point. However, it was not the greatest effort I could have put into the run, so this time my community run ended up over 20 minutes.
I feel good about the fact that I manage to find and maintain my level of exertion at that balancing point. However, it was not the greatest effort I could have put into the run, so this time my community run ended up over 20 minutes.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
April 9th, Speedball
Today our class got organized much faster and better than yesterday, because Mr. Neuf talked to us about being attentive and paying attention when the class is trying to get organized, and lead the game himself. I really agree with what Mr. Neuf said about not fooling around or hanging around outside the class circle; it's just impossible to get everyone's attention and agree on a set of rule and set up for the game when our classmates are all over the place.
I've never played speedball before, but the rules were pretty easy to understand. You play soccer until you catch the ball in midair before it hits the ground, and now you play football; when the ball drops to the ground or you get tagged, you go back to soccer. A "touchdown" is one point, scoring a goal two points, bouncing the ball up from the ground and kicking it over the football poles three points.
I figured out pretty quickly that the game needs a lot of teamwork. It's called speedball for a reason: the ball can get down from one end of the soccer field (which is about a whole minute of hard running, if not sprinting) to the other end in a minute. Having two balls in play at the same time made the game even faster. There's also no breaks; no outs, no foul (hopefully people won't start tackling each other for no reason), and after a team scores the ball goes right back to play. With all that in mind, if someone tried to run back and forth and cover every part of play, they'd be killing themselves.
Our team didn't figure out a good teamwork strategy at first and struggled to keep up with the other team's fast attacks. After a break we started to focus on passing more to each other and form a line of defense to keep the other team from breaking in; I helped our team play better by organizing the ball movement and passing to the people that are open. When we played as a team we finally started to score, and I didn't even need to run out of breath like before.
Speedball is fun, and it definitely helps to improve our sense of teamwork and communication. I hope we can play it again.
I've never played speedball before, but the rules were pretty easy to understand. You play soccer until you catch the ball in midair before it hits the ground, and now you play football; when the ball drops to the ground or you get tagged, you go back to soccer. A "touchdown" is one point, scoring a goal two points, bouncing the ball up from the ground and kicking it over the football poles three points.
I figured out pretty quickly that the game needs a lot of teamwork. It's called speedball for a reason: the ball can get down from one end of the soccer field (which is about a whole minute of hard running, if not sprinting) to the other end in a minute. Having two balls in play at the same time made the game even faster. There's also no breaks; no outs, no foul (hopefully people won't start tackling each other for no reason), and after a team scores the ball goes right back to play. With all that in mind, if someone tried to run back and forth and cover every part of play, they'd be killing themselves.
Our team didn't figure out a good teamwork strategy at first and struggled to keep up with the other team's fast attacks. After a break we started to focus on passing more to each other and form a line of defense to keep the other team from breaking in; I helped our team play better by organizing the ball movement and passing to the people that are open. When we played as a team we finally started to score, and I didn't even need to run out of breath like before.
Speedball is fun, and it definitely helps to improve our sense of teamwork and communication. I hope we can play it again.
Monday, April 7, 2014
April 7th, Capture the Flag
Today in capture the flag the pride of us boys was seriously damaged, because we lost really badly to the girls. And to think that most of us were excited to go boys against girls... (sigh)
When the game started, the girls got on the defensive side right away, and pretty much made human walls on their side. That didn't stop a bunch of us from rushing over to go for the footballs right away. Well, THAT ended really badly, and half of our team landed in jail in less than a minute. I got myself caught too, when I tried to sneak to save a person and help out with the team. It didn't help things that the girls had Jazzy on their side; he pretty much shuted off all the help we might get from the team by himself. So we were stranded in jail for the better half of the game; I got so bored that I played chopsticks with Abishek. Naturally, we lost the game with only a few footballs left, even though our team did better after half of us were captured.
Mr. Neuf said it was a case of brain winning over muscles; I will sort of agree with that :(. The strategy wasn't that complicated - just stay put and take out as much of the other team as possible, then go back on the offense. We lost because we weren't careful enough (I'm inclined to think it's because we don't want the game to get too boring), and I'm sure next time our boys team would do better. On the other hand, it is just a game, and I felt pretty good about trying to get our players back (the getting stranded and doing nothing for 20 minutes wasn't really fun though).
Anyway, it was a fun class. :)
When the game started, the girls got on the defensive side right away, and pretty much made human walls on their side. That didn't stop a bunch of us from rushing over to go for the footballs right away. Well, THAT ended really badly, and half of our team landed in jail in less than a minute. I got myself caught too, when I tried to sneak to save a person and help out with the team. It didn't help things that the girls had Jazzy on their side; he pretty much shuted off all the help we might get from the team by himself. So we were stranded in jail for the better half of the game; I got so bored that I played chopsticks with Abishek. Naturally, we lost the game with only a few footballs left, even though our team did better after half of us were captured.
Mr. Neuf said it was a case of brain winning over muscles; I will sort of agree with that :(. The strategy wasn't that complicated - just stay put and take out as much of the other team as possible, then go back on the offense. We lost because we weren't careful enough (I'm inclined to think it's because we don't want the game to get too boring), and I'm sure next time our boys team would do better. On the other hand, it is just a game, and I felt pretty good about trying to get our players back (the getting stranded and doing nothing for 20 minutes wasn't really fun though).
Anyway, it was a fun class. :)
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