Swimming Class at School - Essay Example

I observed the 2nd-grade swimming at school last February 9th. The starts at 10:00 am and ends at 10:35 am. The head of physical education and fitness, Ms. Lima Fa’agata, was in charge of teaching the lesson for that day, i.e. diving and freestyle, with two other teachers as well. I used the phone, which allows me to record the time in seconds, just like a stopwatch. Then I charted the different categories that the class used. After, I recorded the time spent in each of the categories. By the time the class ended, I could figure out how much time they spent on each category.

At first, three teachers provided an explanation and demonstration of freestyle and diving. Then they gave a lecture for it and provided instructions for safety precautions in class. The teachers spent about 9 minutes and 35 seconds, which is 26.7 percent of the total class time, disseminating freestyle and diving information with safety drills. They were mostly distributing this information at first and at the end of the class. For instance, the teachers distributed three different tasks to three different groups.

Each one of the three groups should play three different activities within the class schedule. A lot of students participated in the swimming class. The class size was packed, so the teachers wanted them to move faster and keep swimming because some of the students could not perform certain activities when the pace is slower between activities. So, the teachers were already settling down the class and breaking down swimming equipment to teach more freestyle and diving techniques before the class gets started.

In order to make sure whether everyone did swim or not for each different swimming task, the teachers would ask the students. In class, the students mostly performed freestyle. And they did diving during the remaining 10 minutes of the class so that there would not be too much wardrobe switching between activities. The class transition was 1 minute and 22seconds, which is 3.5 percent of the total class time spent. Based on my inference, if the transition time was shorter, the students would get more time to practices swimming.

The students who were waiting waited much longer for the next activity to start than they do during transition periods. This is because the class is not running for only one student. Also, they all will learn how to be patient until everyone finishes each exercise. And the teachers need to provide equity in making every student involved in learning the methods of freestyle and diving in the class. The teachers administrated the management of the class, which was a very small portion of the total time.

They were not trying to rush them while teaching freestyle and diving in the right manner because all the students have their own pace of learning how to swim. The only problems they control are the ones that are a threat to their safety in the water. The students are pretty young, so they don’t need to be taught how to swim like skilled and professional swimmers.