Fun in the Sun - Week 1

My second hour class for summer school was VERY different than my first class. My first hour class was obviously in the computer lab, but my second hour class was Fun in the Sun. My first hour class was students going into grades 1-3, but my second hour class was students going into grades 4-6.

The Fun in the Sun class was based on the Olympics. We did not do all the Olympic events, but we did have different countries as team names and different events that the teams would compete in. Each week we had about three events, which did take almost the entire week to get through.

The first week teams were:

• Argentina
• Australia
• China
• Germany

The events for the first week were:

• Team Event - Kickball
• Racing Event - Hurdles
• Other Event - Tug-of-War

The biggest challenge of this week was picking teams. I picked teams completely random the first week. Students picked a country from the hat and that is how they ended up with teams. The problem was that everyone on Team Germany ended up being the powerhouse. They won every single game. On the other hand Team Australia had a lot of problems at the beginning of the week getting a long. All of them were good athletes on their own, but they just were not getting along. This led to students quitting in the middle of the game and the other teams not even having to try to win. However, by the end of the week they seemed to be getting along better and working together a little bit better. They even ended up winning one of the Hurdles Races and a couple Tug-of-War matches.

This first week taught me that it is very important to pick teams as the teacher rather than randomly. It leads to fairer teams and a more successful events.

Each week there were new teams and new events to compete in. This meant students had to learn how to get along throughout the week. Some did a great job right away and some took all week to get along.