Portland Stags: Western Conference Finals on Saturday!

I have mentioned the Portland Stags to my students a few times throughout the past year. For those who haven't heard, they are the newest professional sports team in the Portland area. It's also a brand new professional sport: Ultimate!

My love for ultimate (a.k.a. Ultimate Frisbee) grew in college when I played with buddies almost every day. It is definitely my favorite sport (tied with baseball) because of the beauty of the disc flying through the air, the amazing layouts, and the great exercise and athleticism needed to play well.

Major League Ultimate (MLU) was introduced in 2012. There is also a competing professional ultimate league called the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), which originated on the East Coast. The Portland Stags is the only ultimate team in the Portland area, so naturally, the MLU is better than the AUDL in my book. :-) Time will tell which league comes out on top with popularity in the future.

Anyway, back to the Portland Stags. Last year, they were a league-worst with 1 win and 9 losses. This year, however, they have done a complete 180 with 8 wins and 2 losses. This has allowed them to play in the Western Conference Finals this Saturday, against the Vancouver Nighthawks. Read more about the Stags' journey here.

It's definitely going to be a great game. It will be the first time I attend an ultimate game in person that I'm not actually playing in. :-) Usually I play in a weekly pick-up game with other men and women at Duniway Park in downtown Portland. On Saturday, though, I'll be going with my wife, Jen, to see an amazing match up of the best ultimate players in the Northwest!

If you want to join us and come cheer them on, you can buy tickets here. The game is on Saturday, June 28, at 7pm. You can also watch a live stream of the game online at mlultimate.com.

Go Stags!!!

Hoop Day was Auto Awesome on Google+

I have been having fun with my Google+ photos recently, especially with the "Auto Awesome" images that are automatically created after uploading photos that fulfill certain specific requirements. In the posts embedded below, the "Motion" Auto Awesome photos created animated gifs from a series of photos I took during Hoop Day. Enjoy! (Note: If you have a relatively slow internet connection, it might take a few minutes for the images to load)

One Luke is shooting while the other Luke is dancing to the music!

Josh shooting on Hoop Day!

Jackson shooting on Hoop Day!

Classroom Discussion: Sports Science, Super Bowl, and Richard Sherman

Due to the upcoming Super Bowl game this weekend, the central topic of today's writing assignment was football, of course. However, bringing up current events and issues surrounding this year's "big game" can turn into more than just an assignment about sports. Today we had a great classroom discussion about the depths of Christ's love, how we can use that in every day life (such as sports), and what we see from professional athletes.

My lesson plans included showing three videos to the students. The first two videos, NBC's science of NFL football, integrated math and science into the sport. For the third video, I showed Richard Sherman's infamous interview after his amazing play at the end of the Seahawks-49ers game, which secured Seattle's spot in this year's Super Bowl game. The students have been already talking about this interview on and off over the past two weeks anyway, so I thought I might as well make a writing assignment out of the controversy and hopefully challenge the students to think differently. After the videos, I had them answer several questions in their journals:

• What are your thoughts about American football?
• What did you learn about using science and math with the sport?
• Are you going to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday? Are you a fan?
• Have you heard of any traditions people do for the Super Bowl?
• After watching Richard Sherman's interview, how do you think Jesus would have responded if He was interviewing him?
• Do you think Sherman has a right to talk that way?

Certain boys in my class have a hard time writing in general, and not surprisingly, they wrote more words and more quickly than I have ever seen so far this year! We had a great discussion after the writing portion. The topics ranged from sportsmanship, to thinking before speaking, to how Jesus would play sports, to trash talking, to standing up for our friends, to loving others, and so much more. I am amazed at how the minds of my students are buzzing with all that they are learning and seeing around them. It was great to be able to discuss such a controversial event in a place where we can connect it with Jesus and what He would be pleased with when it comes to competition.

My hope is that watching videos and having discussions like these will inspire these students to do what they know to be right as they grow up. Their character is something that we often neglect as teachers and thankfully at a Christian school we can use this environment to have a safe discussion of what we see around us.

Go Seahawks!!!

Mr. Riedl's YouTube channel updates

For those of you who don't know, yes, I have my own teacher YouTube channel. I have two exciting updates to share as I learn more about technology and how to best share educational resources with students, families, and educators.

First, my most recent video is a clip of my son, showing how, over the summer, he has been learning to catch. He is currently 2.5 years old and is experiencing the successes and failures of learning. In this video, as he catches a variety of different types of balls, I see him sometimes want to give up. However, even though learning can be difficult, it helps to receive encouragement and keep pressing on. And there can even be humorous moments in between, like you'll see in the video... :-) The newest feature that I have included in this video is the "outro" at the end of the video. This took quite a bit of work to figure out how to create the mini video clips, the annotations, and piecing it together to look relatively fluid.

http://youtu.be/C6FRwR1PN0Y

click to zoom

Second, a new feature I included on my YouTube channel is utilizing playlists. A playlist is a collection of videos that have something in common. As you can see in the image here, I have made playlists for different subjects (i.e., Science, Math, Social Studies, etc.). When I find a new video that I would recommend to others and likely show my students if it pertains to what we are learning in class, then I'll add it to one of the appropriate playlists (as well as the videos page on my website). If you subscribe to my channel, then you will be updated whenever I add a new video!

Please consider subscribing! I would love feedback as well as other video recommendations. My students know that I absolutely love videos, and I definitely look forward to learning more about how to be creative visually in the classroom.

Lots of photos!

Here are a bunch of photos from the last few weeks that I finally found time to post on the website.
Enjoy!
--Mr. Riedl
instagram.com/mrriedl

Serving Multnomah neighborhood, simple machines, recess, and more

instagram.com/mrriedl

Awesome Ohio State Marching Band Performance

For all my students who have played in band and also those who love video games...

Check out this awesome performance of the Ohio State University marching band. The theme was "Video Games" and features Pokemon, Tetris, Mario Bros, Halo, Zelda, and Pac-Man. My favorite part is definitely the running horse at 6:07 so don't miss it!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAzzbrFgcUw

Warrior Dash!

My Dad and I ran in the Warrior Dash this weekend. Whew, it was definitely exhausting, but so much fun! It is a 5K run (3.1 miles) over, under, and through obstacles along the way. A few of the obstacles we encountered were crawling under barbed wire, climbing a cargo net, jumping over fire, wading through a mud pit, and many more! The event raises money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. I actually saw quite a few elementary-aged kids running the race too!

Here are a few photos that I'm sure my students will enjoy!

 

Dodgeball tourney

I was on Mr. Reardon's team, and we were unfortunately knocked out of the dodgeball tournament in the quarter-finals. So much fun, though! Sadly, there were a lot of poor sports when some of the high schoolers disagreed with the calls and they argued very disrespectfully. Hopefully my students will remember my rules in the future!