Snap Shots for Teaching! #AEE412 #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!

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

So instead of me listing out every little detail that I read with these assignment, I will be giving you 5 main points or snap shots that I took out of the reading! So watch your eyes, the snap shots are coming your way!

Snap Shot Number One:

The most important thing to establish the first week of school is CONSISTENCY.

This couldn’t be truer for us first time teachers just entering the work world. To be an effective teacher, you have to set up boundaries and expectations for your students so that they form into habits. By starting these early, you can set up your classroom for success, rather than chaos!

Snap Shot Number Two:

Fantasy, Survival, Mastery, Impact

No, this is not a plot to a movie or book rather a map of the four stages of teaching. Depending on where you are in these four stages describes what type of teacher you are. So for example, in the “Fantasy” stage you are wanting to relate and be friends with your students rather than a guiding influence rather than in the “Impact” stage you aren’t fully reaching the full potential of getting to know your students. You were hired to impact, inspire, and TEACH these kids. Finding a balance in these four stages is exactly where you want to be in my opinion.

Snap Shot Number Three:

Put your passion into your teaching

Showing your students that you are passionate and excited about what you are teaching will inspire them to try their best and push themselves (at least that’s what I would hope would happen!). We need to invest time into preparing our lessons and making them relatable to our students to see the maximum growth in the classroom!

Snap Shot Number Four:

TEACH SMARTER NOT HARDER

A huge common thread in all of the articles this week were striving for teachers to be prepared and ready to teach in the classroom. Prepare your lesson plans, be organized, and most importantly have fun.

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

Hope you enjoyed! There will be more to come with the readings! 

 

 Stay Golden and enjoy these last few days of summer weather!

 

 

Knot Your Average Lesson #aee412 #psuaged16

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!

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

Class Lesson: How to Tie a Bowline Knot

Students: 6

Objectives:

• Background Information on Bowline Knots
• Effective Strategies how to tie the Knot using a Mnemonic
• Successfully tie the Bowline Knot

For this lesson, I had an end goal for my students to learn how to tie a bowline knot. When looking at this task I thought that it would be too easy for my students to complete the task and I would have a TON of time left. Turns out, I was wrong. With only 10 minutes for instruction and 5 minutes for the evaluation, there was a lot to do. I created a simple PowerPoint as well as included pictures step by step on how to tie this knot.

During the class session there were some hiccups on how to show the students how to tie it as well as trying to give them all individual attention without losing them to side conversations. My classroom management while I was with individual students was lacking during this lesson as well. After all of the students had free time to practice tying their knots, I went around individually watching them complete the task. This part I also wish I can go back on because I wanted to bring the group all back together to go over it one more time.

Overall, it was a great class and I learned a lot as a teacher when doing a demo. I look forward to the rest of the semester in this class and working on my teaching strategies.

Student Farmers at Saul! #SAE

Stephanie Pleasant (right), Baiyinah (left),
Gizmo the Chinchilla (middle)

Today I had a “blast from the past” moment when observing two students from Walter Biddle Saul High School’s SAE projects. If you are unaware about what an SAE is, it is a Supervised Agricultural Experience where students can gain exposure to different agricultural fields in the work industry. I had the opportunity to meet with rising juniors Baiyinah Cunningham and Stephanie Pleasant about their project as student farmers at the school.

To be a student farmer at W.B. Saul, the agriculture teachers ask students to work through the school year and the summer as a paid intern. They have to clock in and clock out like any other job and they also document their chores and challenges they face in their SAE book every Wednesday with the teachers that supervise them. Both of these girls work together every day with the small animals (mice, rats, guinea pigs) and dogs at the high school cleaning and taking care of them. After we sat down and discussed their projects, the girls showed me around the building where they take care of the animals. To be honest, I had a teacher moment seeing the pride on their faces because of the amount of work that they had put into the place!

Ms. Turrentine working with the rabbits with Baiyinah

After the tour and the follow up with my cooperating teacher, Ms. Turrentine about the student farmer positions she made it clear that she wanted the students to gain different “real world” experiences while they were taking care of the animals. If problems arose along the way she would of course step in and help, but she made sure to challenge the students to use critical thinking when dealing with these issues when they occurred.

Baiyinah and Stephanie stated it well when they said “By having this job, we have learned how to deal with real life problems and also work on our time management when cleaning and taking care of the animals.” These girls are on the right path to having an awesome On-Farm Placement SAE project and are working their way into the animal industry.