Final Lab Write Up! #reflection #psuaged16

Well, today is the day. The day that I give my final presentation about how I have grown as an educator and how I am ready to go out and conquer the world of agriculture education. It is hard to believe how time has passed and now I am here. 

This blog post is meant to be a reflection about my time in AEE 412 and some of my biggest takeaways. Instead of listing everything, I will be giving you my top five reasons why I feel as if I am prepared for student teaching. 

1) I have learned how to incorporate variability in my lessons to make my students enjoy through different aspects of my teaching. Without the thoughtful process of Rosenshine and Furst's Characteristics of Teaching Effectiveness, I don't know where I would be! 

2) I have grown as a teacher and a student! The hardest part about being an agriculture teacher, in my opinion, is the content knowledge. Throughout this semester I have been a student trying to create content to be a teacher. I know that next year will also be a learning process, but I am up for the challenge.

3) I have grown to appreciate my connections that I have in the agriculture education world. As I have been creating lesson plans and getting ready for student teaching, it has been difficult in understanding where I can find information. Teachers have been so supportive in the pursuit of making my find materials as easy as possible.

4) Delivery of my presentation has grown to where I fully talk and listen to myself as a teacher. I have grown to appreciate the knowledge and skills of how to "walk, act, and talk" like a teacher and can apply that next semester as well! 

5) Feedback. This has been a crucial element in my growth and understanding. I have been able to take feedback and apply it in my next lessons in a positive manner. For that, I am so thankful for that opportunity. 

 If you would like to watch a short sneak of my lab video, please take a look below! 

Next time you read this blog, it will be about student teaching and where I am at right now. 

Talk to you later Ag Ed Fam! 

Classroom Management can be...Fun? #readingreflection

Looking back at my childhood, it is funny to think that I was known as the “good kid” when parents used to babysit me. I would always do what I was told, did chores, you know, I had to be the best and in my mind I was! As I got older, I started to rebel and push the limits to my parents and my teachers. It wasn’t until I had a teacher with great classroom management skills that made me realize that I had to calm down and actually start to focus on my studies more. Teachers play an important part in students lives because we help shape them for the future. Classroom management is the foundation for this success.

So what are some key things that I think are important when looking at classroom management? Let’s take a look!

1)      Set the expectations in the beginning!

There is no better way to start the year, then letting the students know what is up! If you want to be honest with them and yourself, this is key in the classroom! By expecting great things from them, there will be great results.

2)     Set that routine as soon as they get in the classroom!

I was raised in a military family and always had a routine as soon as I got up in the morning to when I went to bed at night. This is a great tool to use in the classroom as well! It is important that the students know as soon as they walk into the classroom, there are things that need to get done and you mean business!

3)     Set boundaries

Students can get curious about your life and sometimes can look a little more deeply than what you want them too! Make sure that you are firm and keeping the classroom in check in all aspects!

4)     Don’t forget, HAVE FUN!

Classrooms are places for learning and constructive fun. Note how I said constructive right? As much as kids don’t want to admit it, they crave structure and want the class to go that way as well!

Well that I all I have for this week ag ed folks! I look forward to implementing some of these techniques in the classroom when I student teach and beyond that!

Thanks for reading!

Micro-Teaching and Parli Pro #psuaged16

I now call this blog to order! Welcome to the only blog of my micro-teaching experience from Bald Eagle High School! I had the opportunity to teach an FFA Leadership class on Parliamentary Procedures last week.

If you haven’t heard about micro-teaching, it is awesome program that gives preservice teachers a chance can go out into the “field” and get some experience teaching in a different classroom environment than where they will be student teaching in the spring. It is the chance to create and implement your own lesson plans in the classroom and see if they work. I was under the supervision of Mr. Todd Biddle teaching to his class of 13 students. Let’s jump in and see what happened!

Day One:

- I opened up the class with an introduction of Parliamentary Procedures with a PowerPoint and guided notes.

- Emphasizing different aspects of Parli Pro and making them relatable to their experiences really helps their understanding

- Repeat after me, is not as childish as they think! They learned a lot of the terminology and how to say motions this way!

Day Two:

- I needed to get their energy up, so we did a recap and then proceeded to play a GAME!

            - If your students need debate help, I played a game where they had to debate about a topic positively or negatively and include the three parts of a beginning statement, a middle statement, and then the conclusion! PLUS: if you make it into a competition the students get really into it!

- Talking was a little bit of an issue today, but the students were just really excited!

- I need to be aware of the amount of time! We all got into the class that the bell rang and surprised us all!

Day Three:

- TEST TIME! The students took a test about what they learned. I also allowed them to use Roberts Rules of Order and their notes from the week because it was more important for me to have them understand the subject matter than memorize it!

- Debate Time: The students had the opportunity to debate about two things that Mr. Biddle wanted to talk about regarding Farm Show and their Secret Santa Party that they have every year

- Getting the students talking was a little hard, but once I put motions on the floor that the students didn’t like/like they got really into it!

So what did I learn over these three days?

- My energy and passion for what I was teaching did not go unnoticed! The students were engaged most of the time while they were there and liked the games that we played

- Preparation! As a student, it is hard to understand what prep goes into each lesson and how I need to be on top of my game all the time!

- Being Flexible! There were some instances where the lesson before me wasn’t wrapped up and I had to switch the students to think in different gears to what we were learning next.

- Just have fun! When you are relaxed and having fun, your students will too! They pick up on bad energy and feed off of that. Just relax and have fun!

 

 Overall, I had a blast teaching and learning about where I am about and how I am progressing for the spring semester at Walter Biddle Saul High School!

Thanks for reading Ag Ed Fam!

Let's Teach IBI! #labchat #aee412

One of the senior courses that pre-service teachers are required to take is AEE 412 also known as “Methods of Teaching Agriculture.” During this class, students are able to prepare lesson plans and teach to practice their classroom management and work on their teaching skills. During the course of this class, I will be reflecting on how my lessons went to help better me as a teacher. Enjoy!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _

Flashback to my senior year of high school where my Ag teacher laid out three different types of mystery meat and we had to guess what was what. There was the famous Spam, overly enjoyed hotdogs, and the salty Scrapple. We as a group had to determine what was what even if that meant that we had to…eat it. Now I know that you may be thinking (YUCK!), but the one thing that I took away from the lab is the hands on experience and the amount of fun I had with my group.

After learning about teaching strategies, I learned that my teacher tricked me into learning by getting me engaged in the class and up out of my seat for an Inquiry Based Lab. This lab is a little different in the fact that students form their own questions and create procedures to answer the overarching question of the lab. In my lab for my IBI, I wanted the students to see just how much their lifestyle was effecting the planet as well as how many trees it would take to offset the amount of carbon dioxide that they produced due to their lifestyle.

PROS:

I pushed the students into connecting their math and science classes into one lesson to get the overall picture of measuring trees

I had students work together as a group and I only allowed them THREE post-it notes! These symbolized the amount of questions they were allowed to ask the teacher

The students received hints AFTER they gave me a general idea about what their procedures were to figure out an formula for the trees

CONS:

I frustrated the “students” I think in the beginning of class because they were unaware of the terminology that I was using. Due to the fact that I will be teaching this to a class that has had this verbiage before, they will be more likely to understand the material than my colleagues in the lab.

Preparation. For this lab, you need to be really up to date on the information that you want to teach to answer any students questions and to help them out when they have clarification questions.

Overall, my “students” grasped the concept fairly well and they understood where I was going with the class. I think that in the real classroom students will enjoy it because it not only includes them getting out of their seats, but it allows them to go…OUTSIDE! Hopefully more information is to come when I get in the classroom but that is all for now!

Thanks for reading Ag Ed Fam!  

Inquiry Based Instruction #weeklyreflection #aee412

You know as teachers, we all have some tricks up our sleeves for our students! One of those tricks is IBI. So what is IBI you may wonder? Well let me tell you! It is called Inquiry Based Instruction. It is a type of instruction that allows students to think through questions to solve a problem at hand. It is also a type of an instruction that can be difficult to teach, but it provides a lot of opportunities for students to learn by solving things themselves and thinking through problems.

Inquiry Based Instruction is interesting as well when it comes to processing the problems at hand. There are five steps that can help any student through IBI. Those steps are as follows:

1.       Question

2.      Investigate

3.      Utilize Evidence in order to describe, predict, and explain

4.      Connect evidence to previous knowledge

5.      Share Findings
 

The reason why this is so effective, according to some studies, is because it is a logical way that we as humans think through out problems and try and find solutions. In a study by Warner and Myers in an article titles “Implementing Inquiry-Based Teaching Methods” it outlined a new system that all teachers should use when putting IBI in their lessons. The list is:

1)      Start the Inquiry Process

2)     Promote Student Dialogue

3)     Transitioning between small groups and classroom discussion

4)     Intervening to clear misconceptions or develop students understanding of content material

5)     Modeling scientific procedures and attitudes

6)     Utilizing student experiences to create new content knowledge

 

Wow what a list right?

After reading all of the articles this week it is interesting to see what type of facilitation for learning can happen in the classroom and lab setting. I am excited to develop my lessons in to push my students to think through problems to facilitate in their learning!

That’s all for this week Ag Ed Fam!

Let’s recap about FFA National Convention #psuaged16

FFA National Convention is one of my favorite times of the year. It is where a sea of blue and gold corduroy jackets flood a city to challenge them to be better leaders, participate in competitions, meet other students from across the nation, and gain new experiences that will stick with them forever. This convention was a special one for me too. This year, I swapped in my “Member” pin to an “Advisor” pin, and folks let me tell you, it is an HONOR to wear one of those pins.

I had the opportunity to chaperone eight amazing, hardheaded, challenging, and friendly students in Louisville, Kentucky for 5 jam packed days. Although I did not experience the pleasure of riding in a school van for 10+ hours like the rest of my classmates did to Kentucky, I had the unique opportunity to travel by plane with my students….some for the very first time!  Our journey began at 6AM in the morning on Tuesday where I met these students at the Philadelphia International Airport.  After going through security and finding our gate, “Team Philly” was ready to go to the 88^th National FFA Convention!

Instead of giving a “play by play” account of all the experiences, I will share a few of my most memorable experiences of the week:

- I got a nickname! Yes, Ms. Murphy-Sweet can sometimes be a mouthful, so my students decided to call me Ms. Sweetz <<<< and yes the ‘z’ is meant to be there!

- The red Advisor pin can transport you to some pretty cool places! Places such as Teacher World, opportunities to receive free lesson plans and textbooks from the convention, as well as some awesome workshops that I can use in a “hands on” approach in  my student teaching next semester!

- Students get hangry…. and tired…. just like you! Convention can drain any person. The continual pattern of standing, walking, watching the events going on around you, new things to see, can put a strain on any person that was there. I had to power thru the fatigue and be the cheerleader to my students and push them to get out there.  They needed to understand that they needed to take full advantage of the opportunity being given and experience anything and everything.  Get out of their comfort zone and meet people outside of the Northeast.  This could be the only time they have the opportunity to attend convention.  Make it worthwhile!

- One- on-one conversations do matter! I challenged myself to have a meaningful conversation with EACH one of my student’s to let them know a little more about me and for me to find out more about them. By the end of the week, I felt like I had made a connection with each one of them and understand what they want to learn in the coming semester. They felt more comfortable around me and were able to joke around and be themselves.  We wear many hats when we teach:  the teacher, the advisor, second parent, and counselor everyday with our students!

- And lastly, the most important lesson that I learned…..preparation.  I was not as prepared for this as I would have liked to be.  I believe that this self-critique will allow me to build upon this experience and learn from it. I want to be a strong student teacher this next semester. Sometimes the biggest lessons are not when you teach but you are taught a lesson from students.  I am taking this “teachable moment” to pass along to you when you experience this for the first time.  You see, there is more to this story as I challenged myself when I chose my school to student teach and the students that came along with this package deal.  

My students are not the typical FFA students that you would imagine in an agriculture setting. They come from different cultural backgrounds, families, and experience life survival challenges that most of us read about but never are faced to witness first hand.  Most of us are truly blessed in our lives as a result.  This week, one of my students was faced with a difficult situation regarding her race and cultural background. Although I am not going to give details to the situation, it is important to know that she had an opportunity to react with two different scenarios.  She chose the high road and did not create a confrontation or put her teachers in an awkward situation. She chose to not go down the path that the other had chosen, but instead hold herself to a higher standard there and did so with grace and humility.  At such a young age, I learned something from a student when coming into this convention I thought I was going to be the “expert” and show them how to act and how they would be treated based on my experiences in years past.  After learning what had happened, I was mad, humiliated, and generally disappointed that after all of the education that is out there, this was still an issue with today’s youth.   It was her attitude and determination to let it go that led it to a teachable moment for me. Her attitude and kindness towards others taught me a valuable lesson and reminded me that sometimes I have to be a student and let my students teach me a thing or two! 

Overall, I am incredibly honored to be teaching at a school where my students are confident on who they are and challenge themselves every day. Although they are going to push me to be a better teacher, I cannot wait to be with them for a part of their educational journey. 

 

Thanks for reading Ag Ed Fam!

Life Knowledge Lab Reflection #aee412 #psuaged16

Teaching the lesson at Saul!

On Monday October 26^th, I visited W.B. Saul High School to teach a lab based on the Life Knowledge lesson plans that they have online at FFA.org. The lesson that I taught to the class was titled “Defining Career Success,” and by the end of my lesson it was clear that the students knew what that was. The class dynamic was completely different from what I was used to, but you know what it was a good thing!

So let’s talk about the lesson itself!

The objectives were as follows:

1) Identify skills necessary to create career success

2) Explain why effectively contributing to society is important to career success

3) Define career success

Pretty self-explanatory right?

Students working hard on the definition!

As I started the lesson, I wanted to show the students that what they were doing in the classroom now impacted their future in more ways than they knew. When the class first started I had them think of a question that has been around for students since the beginning of time. That question was, “What do you want to be when you grow up and how can you get there?” What a tough question right? As the students thought about the question and shared out with the class their dreams of what they wanted to be, I then opened up the door to talking about what they think would make a good employee based on what job they had. This really got them thinking about skills and people that have demonstrated that to them in their lives and what good role models they do have!

After having an in class discussion, we discussed the roles that employees and employers play in their community and how it can build up their understanding of where they are working and how their job impacts where they are. The last objective, for defining career success, I paired up the groups and had them create their own definition of what career success is and then share it with the class until I gave them the true definition of what it was.

Ms. Turrentine and myself with the class
mascots!

Overall the lesson went great with my 10^th graders and they learned a lot and actually recapped what we learned for me on the board which proved that they did learn a lot. After I completed the lesson I wanted to get their feedback about what they thought and where I could improve myself for next semester. I gave each of them a notecard and asked if they could write down notes for the following; what I did GOOD, BAD, and where can IMPROVE for next semester. They gave back some awesome feedback and I was happy that I asked because it validated how I felt. Funny note as well, they noticed that I was nervous and apprehensive when delivering my lesson plan. Students are like sharks and they can smell fear in a teacher so it was interesting seeing that they actually noticed it when I thought I hid it well.

Overall, I am super excited to teach at W.B. Saul in the spring. These students are pushing me to be a better teacher and person every day and I am excited to see what it will be like in the end of my student teaching experience.

That’s all for now Ag Ed Fam Jam!

#TeachAgChat Reflection: Gems and Opps

Social media can be a funny thing. It is a chance for us to share information about ourselves with friends, share out important dates for events, and even lets us share information regarding questions that we all have. That is exactly what I wanted to do with my Twitter Chat. I wanted to ask the public on Twitter they thought about technology in the classroom and what resources they could share with me.

The twitter chat was called, “Opportunities and challenges with technology regarding School-Based Agriculture Education.” The questions were fairly simple with an objective to share information and get peoples personal opinions about what they thought technology in the classroom entailed. Check out our graphic below for the questions!

 

So lets talk about the event!

Gems:

My teammates were awesome! Janae Herr and Jenna Timmons, both members of the 2016 senior class, they helped in the collaboration of creating the questions and sharing out the information on their personal twitter feeds.

We were prepared for the event by having our graphic ready to go and finding resources to share out! We even had a dinner ready to go! It was great!

TweetDeck was our lifesaver! It allowed us to tweet and retweet the responses and questions and even let us pre-create the tweets with the questions and time them out to keep the conversation going!

Assigning roles to people is definitely important as well when completing a twitter chat. My teammates and I worked hard to assign roles of the greeter, retweeter, follow up question giver, and many more to make this chat possible! It was great to know that we all had each other’s backs in this assignment!  

Opps:

I believe that we had a lot of questions for a short amount of time. Altough I believe all of our questions were important and we did want to know answers to all of them, it was hard to get them all answered in the short amount of time that we had.

More Experts were needed! In our Twitter Chat we are challenged to find experts to help us out with the chat and to be there to help answer any other questions others may have that we may not have the answer to. The role of the expert was not defined as well as it should so that would be an improvement that I would stress to the other Teach Ag Chat people that are next!

 

Overall, I thought that it was a great opportunity to get our names out there and to find out answers to our questions that we all have. I was impressed by the amount of people that came to the chat and I also enjoyed that they pushed us in our thinking as well! Thank you for reading and good luck to the next Twitter Chat leaders with their chat this coming week!

 

Weekly Writing: Did ya get it? #psuaged16

With large amounts of reading assignments in various classes, reflecting on what I read is vital for the understanding of the subject matter. By blogging each week about the various readings, I will be able to think, reflect, and the share with my peers! Hang in there with me as the reading assignments come, just know that I am making it short and concise for you instead of your reading them all! Enjoy!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

 

Teaching can be funny sometimes. You plan out your lessons, create engaging hands on activities so that your students can connect ideas from the classroom to the activity, but how do we know if our students “got it”? Besides juggling being a teacher, being prepared for every lesson, having all of your materials ready, it can be very overwhelming and you may make the common mistake of not going back and checking for your students understanding of what you are teaching. So this week’s weekly writing was ALL about ways we can check for understanding to make sure our kids “got it”!

Hinge those questions

One great technique that I learned was called “hinging your questions”. What this means is that checking for understanding from your students, you can check to see if you want to take a step back and go over material again OR keep moving forward because your students understand what is going on. It is important to make sure that everyone is on the right page to leave no one behind.

Why not reflect about yourself?

It is interesting to think about letting students have time to actually think back and reflect about what they learned instead of what you thought they learned. This reflection is key for students because they can actually evaluate how they are doing and can carry that strategy with them in their careers.

Student Portfolios

My mom always told me that it was never too early to create a resume and create a portfolio of all of my achievements. Although I was 5 years old when she said this (just kidding), it stuck with me and I have been able to track my growth. How awesome would it be if I could do that in MY classroom? Where students can have hand held materials tracking how they were their entire time they were in agriculture education classes. Infinite possibility can happen and can you imagine what type of portfolio those students can have when trying to find a job? I mean WOW!

Rubrics

This is such a stable in education. Teachers use rubrics to let the students know what they are being graded on and also help teachers effectively grade students work. These rubrics need to show that what students are learning is purposeful and it is building them up for what is yet to come. This is a very important tool for the teachers as well as the students!

 So where do I go from here? Simple! During my student teaching I need to be intentional and creative with my students to help them “understand” the subjects that are being taught. Hopefully, it will create a healthy learning environment and my students will be engaged during all lessons!

Thanks for reading Ag Ed Fam!   

Problem Based Lab: Soil Texture #psuaged16 #labchat

One of the senior courses that pre-service teachers are required to take is AEE 412 also known as “Methods of Teaching Agriculture.” During this class, students are able to prepare lesson plans and teach to practice their classroom management and work on their teaching skills. During the course of this class, I will be reflecting on how my lessons went to help better me as a teacher. Enjoy!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _

I am going to tell you a secret…. Are you ready?

Not all your lesson plans are going to go the way you think.

WHAT?!?! Weird I know right? You plan, think of every little detail of the lesson, and then when it is your time in the classroom, a kid comes left field and could potentially throw you off your game for the entire rest of your class period.

My Ag Ed family, THIS is what happened to me during my lab on Wednesday.

This week’s lab assignment was to create a lab with a problem solving approach for our students. I decided to do a lab that was based on soil run off, our soil texture, and practice using the Soil Texture Triangle. I included a lab to get the students thinking about the different soil textures that were out there and they were even allowed to create their own soil texture! So using granola, cornstarch, and flour, they created their own soil texture and then try to find it on the triangle. Lots of fun, right? Yet after my lab concluded I still felt that my lab was sub-par to what it could have been.

When the lab began, I had them do several exercises using the Soil Texture Triangle just to get their minds in gear for the lab. We did role playing where students were a farmer and others were soil researcher and they had to help each other out to find out what type of soil the farmer had. The class did great with the exercises even though there was a lot of excitement in the room and lots of questions we kept trudging through!

When it was time for the lab portion, I was really proud of myself for chunking out the directions and waiting for all the students to be engaged and listening. They were able to make their own soil textures and through a trial and error process figure out what exactly it was! It was a great learning experience for me and even the students who were participating. It all turns around to asking the RIGHT questions to promote the conversation and problem solving approach.

So what is down the line for me in my next lab?

-         - Breaking away from the facilitator role into the teacher role (tone down the excitement just a little!)

-         - Actively improving my delivery of instructions and questioning

-         - Continuing finding more ways to address all three modalities of learner in my classroom!

Overall, these labs keep getting better for me becoming a “Master Teacher”! With the help of my cohort and my professors I am on my way to improving these skills for the future!

Till next time Ag Ed Fam! 

Calling all Vice Presidents! #FLC #reflection

Facilitating workshops has been a passion of mine since I have been in college. I enjoy teaching students from all different areas, create innovative and fun workshops, and of course being outgoing and having a blast with the students that attend the workshop. This past Monday, the 2016 Student Teacher Candidates at Penn State were asked to lead a workshops to the newly elected student officers from different FFA chapters around the state about their positions and requirements that they have based on the National FFA Handbook. I had the opportunity to work with Erin Yoest who is a 2016 Student Teacher Candidate and a junior Danielle Johnson who is also enrolled in the Ag Education program. So let’s break down the FLC preparation, presentation, and lastly goals for next time!

Preparation:

Planning a two and a half hour long workshop can be tricky for workshops and even teaching! You have to plan out a lesson plan, supplies, and create ways for your students to be engaged the ENTIRE time! Erin and I worked on the lesson plan to come up with our objectives and ideas about how we were going to facilitate the workshop. Our grand theme was based on the game of “Wheel of Fortune”! The students were going to have to spin our handmade wheel to gain points and guess the phrases which were the objectives! After our creation of all of our ideas and a practice run with Danielle we were ready for the workshop!

Presentation:

To summarize the experience that I had, I bulleted the ideas and thoughts I had:

- Students are NOT awake at the beginning of workshops.

- Being a facilitator is more than just presenting information... You have the opportunity to connect with your students and I was able to leave that workshop confident that those students were going to remember me!

- Don’t be afraid to let the students work harder on an objective to really dig deep         down and think about the objectives!

- Regardless if other workshops get out early, make sure you finish your last thoughts before dismissing them!

Goals for next time:

After completing the workshop and dismissing the students for lunch, I sat down and thought about how the lesson went. There were some students that weren’t engaged to their full potential BUT there were some students that were engaged and were talking with me that I knew that even though I couldn’t reach that small percentage of students, others liked the lesson and hey we did a great job! Some things I would change if I did it again:

- Allow co-facilitators opportunities to give direction more and have myself take a step back.

- Give students time to work with different groups to get a different gauge of the different ideas that were in the room.

- Allow more time for questions and clarification at the end!

Overall, FLC was an amazing opportunity and I am so glad that I was able to work with my peers on this workshop. I was able to evaluate my teaching strategies and engage with different students which made me so happy that I choose to be an Agriculture Educator. If you ever feel that you aren’t impacting your students, then you are wrong! Walking out of there, each one of those students were smiling and were prepared to go back to their chapters with new ideas and strategies that they can implement in their own chapters! We do make a difference!

 

What Questions Are There? #weeklywriting

With large amounts of reading assignments in various classes, reflecting on what I read is vital for the understanding of the subject matter. By blogging each week about the various readings, I will be able to think, reflect, and the share with my peers! Hang in there with me as the reading assignments come, just know that I am making it short and concise for you instead of your reading them all! Enjoy!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I pride myself on being a student who can get out of my comfort zone and ask questions to better my learning. However, when I was in high school, it was a different story for some of my peers who were afraid to get out of their comfort zone and afraid that they would be laughed at if the question was "weird". Moving my educational path to where I am today has changed the way I look as a teacher in how I want to help my students by asking the RIGHT questions to help build learning in and out of the classroom.

According to Cornell University, there are many different ways that we can ask students questions but, we have to make sure that we are wording them correctly to help them analyze and build on the topic that is at hand. Now, I am not saying that every question you ask as a teacher needs to be a deep question, they can be quick checks to see where your students are at, they can be probing questions to help students dig deeper into the topic at hand, or they can be open ended questions where students can use their own opinions to help answer the questions.

So what are some examples of powerful questions you may ask? Check out Rebecca Albers "Five Powerful Questions" that all teachers should ask.

1) What do you think?

This makes students form opinions and truly think about the topic.

 

2) Why do you think that?

Giving students the power to defend their reasoning makes them support the topic and defend what they want to see!

 

3) How do you know this?

Making students search for background information and use their personal experiences can truly help them build the connectedness of the lesson.

 

4) Can you tell me more?

Make them feel powerful and have them TEACH YOU!

 

5) What questions do you still have?

Always reassure students that if they have questions that they can be confident and sure that they can ask those in your classroom.

So where do we go from here?

As a student teacher in the Spring I want to build up my students level of thinking and empower them to ask the right questions to help build them up! I cannot wait to try these new techniques that  I learned in this reading next semester!

 

Till next time Ag Ed Fam Jam!

Planning in teaching is KEY

If you are like me, planning may not come easy to you. I used to struggle with thinking ahead, making sure everything is ready, and sometimes as bad as this sounds, I used to just “wing it” when it came to planning for anything. But boy has that changed since I have been a senior this year preparing for my student teaching in the spring. I have had to prepare and make sure that all of the little details are ready so that when I go into student teaching I can make the classroom the best it can be for me, but more importantly, my students!

So how did my first unit plan go? I will be listing out some “Gems” for the great things in my lesson and then some “Opps” for some opportunities that I want to focus on for the next time I create the unit plan!

Class: Small Animal Science

Year: 10^th Grade

Unit: Small Animals as Pets

Unit Length: January 25^th through February 4^th (10 classes each 103 minutes)

Unit Goals:

1) Students will plan and execute a budget plan and resources list for people interested on owning animals

2) Students will identify skills and procedures to own a service animal

3) Students will identify the importance of organized committee work with others

Gems:

-         I FINALLY found a font and style that I liked for my unit plans that is easy for         me to follow and teach from.

-         I created interesting lessons for my students that each grab their attention           different ways and will hopefully spark interest in all of my students

-         I created lesson objectives that can help guide my discussion in the classroom

Opps:

-         Finding more standards to fit into my unit plan

-         Creating a more unique unit rationale defining why this unit is important!

-         Rewording some of my objectives to fit the standards here at Penn State

Where do I go from here? That is easy!

I want to focus on making my lesson plans unique and interesting to make sure that my students are able to focus on the lesson. By doing that, I hope to keep all of my students wanting more in the classroom! That is not all though! I want to get more peer checks to make sure that I am getting more peer feedback for each of my units and even some of my lessons because they may be able to point out things that I can’t see.

Overall, this exercise of creating unit plans helped me look back over the small details and push myself as a teacher to make those lessons clear and understandable for all parties! I am also so grateful that I have a cohort that is willing to help me improve myself and my lessons!