When reflecting on my experiences at St. Marys so far, I feel that there are a few challenges and difficulties I have faced. One is getting the students attention and keeping it. There have been many of times where we are able to bring the kids in and get them to listen. Usually we have to yell at the top of our lungs just for them to hear us. The listening only lasts for so long. Usually after only a couple seconds of talking and trying to explain or give directions they start talking or yelling our or moving around. I understand that they are very excited and wound up after being in school all day so it is going to be difficult to get their attention especially at the beginning. They seem to have so much energy and the last thing they want to do is listen again. Another issue is that there are times where they don’t all agree on doing an activity together. The older kids are the best exaple of that. There are usually certain groups who want to play basketball, one kid on the side playing soccer, or the girls playing on the mats. In this case it is harder to keep them all satisfied and involved. When loosing their attention it is even worse because then they are just unhappy.

I think a few suggestions on how to reslove these difficulties would be in the first case, with the students not paying attention would be to be louder. I know I struggle with this and I have noticed that it tends to be hard but ive also noticed that the louder you are the more likely they are going to listen to you longer. When they know that they can talk over you they are going to try and do it. If you are loud enough where you have their attention 100% I think chances are its going to last longer. I also feel that using a whistle seems to work really well. Its very loud in the gym and when you have lots of little kids running around yelling sometimes trying to yell over them just isnt going to work. I think that the students are going to be wound up after the school day no matter what so in order to get in keep their attention we need to be as involved as possible, loud and keep it interesting so it catches their attention. With the second issue I think the best way to go about this is to just let each kid do what they want. Ive noticed that a majority of the students especially in the older group like to play basetball. There are enough of us that we can split up and be able to interact with all the children even if they are doing separate things. We need to do out best to keep them happy and enjoying the day.