Teacher of the Year Sandra Prillaman 2017

I feel I am a positive role model because I am very active and love to get involved with the classes. I will participate with them, which the students love, and try to get them motivated by watching me being able to perform the skill and movements. I stress the importance of including all students with all different ability levels. I explain that everyone has a strength in something so be sure to utilize all students in their area of strength.

I am always looking for new, innovative lessons to keep the students engaged and enjoying every minute of class. I just discovered National Lesson Plan Creator and am enjoying playing around with it to develop new, up to date lessons to maximize the participation and enjoyment from the students.

In the four years that I have been here at Fifer I feel this may be one of our biggest challenges. We are always trying to get together to be sure we are all on the same page and covering the same areas. Our department just went through training to develop more lessons on Schoology so now I feel with this new use of technology we can be more connected and able to create a balanced curriculum that covers all the grade levels. I feel we are headed in the right direction and try to keep my team up to date and involved as much as possible. We try to relate to the students by using 21st Century skills that we know they can identify with and enjoy the process.

I am constantly looking for new ways to motivate the students and get them to enjoy the lessons. We are living in a generation where kids don’t play outside as much as they used to and I can see the difference in my classroom. The basic skill levels are lower so I am trying to encourage students to get active outside of school and find an activity they enjoy to keep moving and keep healthy. We introduce new and innovative games to try and spark and interest in fitness and motivate students to get active outside of school. I enjoy attending conferences and clinic that will give me the most up to date information and ideas to take back to my classroom.

I utilize the fitness gram to show growth in our fitness tests from the start of the year to the end. I also have lectures/notes to be sure the students are comprehending all the information for a particular unit. I give not only skill tests, but written tests to assess their knowledge and growth. I also have class discussions with the essential questions and our targets so I am certain the students understand my expectations. I also like that our curriculum allows us to be hands on because I can see so much growth and development after a few days in unit.

I am new to Shape America/Shape Delaware but have been to several DAHPERD conferences in my years of teaching. I enjoy meeting with other teachers and learning new strategies and lessons to take back to my classes. I am always looking for new ways to teach a particular lesson so it doesn’t become repetitive or boring. I have gotten some new innovative lessons from either attending the conferences or speaking with co-workers who were able to attend.

I am very involved outside of my classroom. I coach Field Hockey and Basketball at the school and I have also coached for several organizations outside of my school. I have helped start a “Girls on the Run” chapter at our school which was more like a “Couch to 5K” program since we are at the middle school level.

I am a mother of four girls. When they were younger, I volunteered my time in the community to coach at several different local organizations. I coached soccer, basketball, and field hockey. I have also been involved with the environment and helped plant trees in Smyrna and plant beach grass at the Indian River Inlet. I have been involved with Top Soccer of Delaware and assisted the physically handicapped playing soccer.

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