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!