My Ag Ed Journey

During my agricultural mechanics demonstration, I taught my family how to put together mini corn hole boards by putting in two hinges. Overall, this lesson seemed to go fairly well, with my brother being able to talk his way through the steps as he put one together. Then after the video, my mom put the last one together. Everyone seemed to know what was expected of them and how to complete the task, especially my dad who gave me a quick rundown on how to use his specific tools before my lesson. Ideally, when I taught this in a real school setting it would follow the students cutting out their boards and staining them. After this lesson, they would then put the bean bags together to complete their games. This lab may even make a good fundraiser as they are fairly inexpensive and easy to make, with the total work time for one set being roughly an hour or an hour and a half. One question that I do have though is how would you manage a large group of students in a shop?

During the NAAE Convention, I got the chance to talk with different agriculture teachers from across the country, or at least listen to presenters talk about what they have done for their students during NAAE. All of them seemed to have similar ideas on what their students needed during their absence. The teachers left mostly easy assignments or movies for their students in their absence. Some teachers had their students working on long term projects that they could continue working on during the convention. The most common reason that teachers attended the NAAE Convention was to attend professional development workshops. Another reason that teachers said they came to NAAE was that they were getting an award. Networking didn’t appear to be a big reason for why teachers attended the convention.

During my life knowledge lesson, I taught Dr. McLean’s eighth-grade year-long Introduction to Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources class. Prior to presenting this lesson, I thought I had it worked out nicely I had given what I thought was appropriate timing in my lesson plan for each activity. However, I found out during my lesson that this was not the case. I ended up having to much time left at the end of class and not knowing what to do with it, this caused Dr. McLean to need to assist me in filling the rest of the time. I also found that the students did not appear to be all that interested in the topic, which was Goal Setting. One issue that I feel was evident was that I didn’t have a lot of interactive activities for the students. This seemed to make the students less inclined to participate as they didn’t seem interested in this activity. I think that if I were to redo this lesson, I would add more fun activities to the lesson to maintain the students’ attention. What

Classroom management may be one of the more difficult parts of teaching to get the hang of. Some students may be very up-front distractions while others would be a bit more secretive in their activities. There are many ways to go about managing your classroom but some of the most common methods are, calling out the behavior, speaking to the student after class and proximity control. During my student teaching, I have no doubt that I will have at least one instance where I will need to use classroom management techniques with my students. I hope to minimize this by having my classroom expectations and consequences posted where the students can see them. By showing my students what behaviors are expected of them and what consequences they will receive I hope to discourage negative behavior in the classroom. I also hope to be able to use classroom management techniques that are as little a distraction as possible to the rest of my class, because if they weren’t distracted by the student(

During my micro teaching at Bald Eagle high school I got to experience teaching students I a classroom setting for the first time. This was a great experience that I'm glad I had as it gave me the chance to see what it will be like during student teaching. It also showed me some areas that I need to work on, with the main area being my confidence. I knew the topic of my micro unit, plants and pollinators, fairly well which wasn't the problem, and I can explain the relationships between the two fairly easy to a few people but when I was in front of actual students I kept feeling like I was going to mess up, which inevitably caused me to stop and rethink what I'd said and repeat what I'd already said. On the other hand Mr. Biddle, and the students, said that they liked the activities that I had in my lessons. I made some of these activities and adapted others and they went over fairly well. The main issue that at least I thought existed was that I didn't plan out how

During this past week, we learned about using inquiry-based learning to plan our lessons. We went to a FAST symposium to learn more about how to use inquiry-based lessons and different ways to do so. During this symposium, we presented our inquiry-based lessons. I presented a part of my micro-unit assessment on pollinators and agriculture. During this assessment students needed to create a design for a pollinator garden using specific criteria, such as pollinator types and different flowers. I'd thought that this lesson went over fairly well, as my classmates all seemed to do fairly well with the lesson. However, I chose to change it slightly for the students as I felt that the original version may take too much time. Changing lessons is an important part of teaching, because if something doesn't work with the lesson then it will need to be edited so that future lessons can work better. By adapting lessons overtime you will be able to make the best lessons and units possibl

I feel that my micro-unit contains essential project design elements. I believe that the individual lessons flow well together with students first learning about how pollinators benefit agriculture and the world as a whole, then they will learn about the different traits plants have to attract specific pollinators, before they work together to create designs for pollinator gardens. This will be my first experience teaching students in a school setting without a group. During one of my wildlife management classes, I assisted in teaching elementary students about invasive species and the environmental danger that they pose. I have also had several experiences teaching my classmates during lab sessions, as well as a short lesson during AEE 100 on how to build a bat box and why they are important. I like to include some form of activity where students can gain the hands-on skills that they need but is still a simple and relatively easy activity. I want to continue using different activi

During my Student Teaching this spring I will be at the Northern Burlington Regional School District, spending half of my time at the High School and the other half at the Middle School. Over the last few months, I have been learning more about my cooperating center and the surrounding area. I have learned about what resources are available, the teachers, classes and a bit about the community. I have compiled what I have learned into a three-minute video for easy reference to some of the information that I will need during my student teaching. I hope to learn many things from not only Dr. McLean and the other Agriculture Teachers at Northern Burlington, but the administration, students and community members as well. I look forward to seeing my own growth and the students's growth while I am there.

Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI) is a good way to get students to develop their problem-solving skills. Students will be given a question and the tools that they need to answer these questions. The students will then use their problem-solving skills to discover one possible solution to the question. The nice thing about IBI is that students can use different methods to come up with different answers, this allows for a variety of solutions to a possibly simple question. In the way, it is performed IBI is very similar to Problems-Based instruction but with one key difference. The main difference between Inquiry-Based Instruction and Problems-Based Instruction is that Problems-Based instruction usually has a single answer. While both types of instruction require students to search for their answer the way the question is answered is different in the number of possible answers. Inquiry-Based Instruction gives students a greater opportunity to answer the question correctly as there

Literacy strategies are an important part of any form of education. If students or individuals do not understand the content, they are unlikely to perform well in the classroom. This is especially true in an area where the educational process may be slightly dangerous for the student. This could include any type of shop setting where there could be many hazards to student and instructor safety. By using different strategies to ensure student literacy we can avoid any potentially dangerous situations. Literacy strategies can also be used to help clear up other misunderstandings on how an industry works and how that relates to other areas. This is because misunderstandings can make it difficult to properly communicate with one another as you can not necessarily understand one another. In regards to Inquiry-Based Instruction (IBI) literacy skills are important to the entire process of education. Students need to understand not only the question that they are being asked but als

During the FFA National Convention, I talked to a few Agriculture teachers on how they planned for their students. Both those who stayed back at their home school and those who went to the convention. The teachers had different ways for their students who remained at school to continue to learn during their classes. Some of the teachers simply left busy work for their students, such as worksheets or simple lecture material that substitute teachers would not have much difficulty presenting. One of the teachers, on the other hand, had their students working on different projects and speeches for other upcoming competitions. For the students that went to the convention, the teachers seemed to have one of two main methods to the first was teachers who only brought competing students. These teachers had their students focus solely on the competition that they were competing in, they did not make their students worry about homework for their other classes. The other method was the teache

During my Surprise Lab, I acted as the substitute teacher for a lesson prepared by one of my classmates, Amanda Gagne. Amanda’s lesson was on Wildfires and it seemed very interesting to me. Before this lesson, I had looked through her lesson plan to see what the lesson was about and what was to be said during the lesson. When presenting the lesson, I did not follow her lesson plan exactly so I got a little lost in my delivery but it seemed to work well. I think that this relates well to what I know about teaching because teaching doesn’t always go the way you think it would. This is especially true if you aren’t prepared for or don’t know the lesson material. The more prepared you are for a lesson or the more you know about the subject the better you will be able to move through the lesson. One thing that I learned from this experience is to look over the materials left by the teacher of the class that I am substituting for. I did not look through my classmate

Differentiated instruction is very important to courses in order to maximize student success. All students learn in different ways, while anyone can learn through different methods, we all have a preferred method or one that simply works best for us. By using different teaching methods, you will benefit students by catering to their different learning styles. While all students benefit from differentiated learning it is necessary for some students. Some students will need differentiated instruction to succeed in class. By adapting the lessons to individual student needs you can help them to succeed in additional methods to improve the learning environment for all students. During my student teaching internship, I plan to implement differentiated learning to improve my students’ education. I know that there will be students in need of differentiated education styles and because of this, I will find ways to adapt my lessons for them. One way that I might use differentiated lea

Problem Solving Assessment During this lesson, I gave my students an assessment of assessing water quality with chemical tests and macroinvertebrates. I brought in water test strips, sample water from my aquarium and images of macroinvertebrates.   My plan for future use of this lesson is to use the liquid chemical tests instead of the test strips, I would also have actual macroinvertebrates for my students to look at. I think this lesson relates well to what I know about teaching and learning. Prior to this lesson, my students will have learned what they needed to in order to perform this assessment. Such as how to conduct a chemical test, how to identify macroinvertebrates and how to collect them. My students will use these skills to solve a problem related to their lesson, in order to show the skills that they gained. One thing that I learned from this is that during activities I may have to step back a little bit. However, I will also need

Assessing Students Assessments are one of the most important parts of education as they are used to gauge what students have learned, what they already know/think they know or what skills they have developed. Different types of assessments have different purposes in regard to student evaluation. The two main types of assessments are formative assessments and summative assessments. Formative assessments take place before the learning process. During these assessments, teachers are trying to determine how much background knowledge their students have on the topic being taught. By using formative assessments teachers are able to change their lessons to start on an easier or more advanced topic regarding the main lesson. Summative assessments, on the other hand, takes place at the end of instruction. The goal of this assessment is to see either how students improved over the course of a given unit and/or how much they have learned from it. Summative assessments tend to be more h

Problem Solving and Student Projects Problem-solving by definition is finding solutions to difficult or complex issues. Problem-solving goes hand in hand with project-based learning, as students will be given a problem that they must find the solution to. These problems can vary in difficulty but are generally kept to a level at which the students can solve. The projects that students complete can also vary based upon what material the class is currently learning about. By breaking up class material by levels of importance and difficulty in order to build up the problem-solving skills of students. By having my students complete small projects throughout the year on topics related to/using course material students will be able to explore areas of interest while learning the important class material. I hope to use brief projects in my classes to allow my students to learn for themselves as much as possible. I would use these projects to create a larger end of the quarter project

One important thing that I knew before the readings for this week’s assignment is that all questions are not the same. Some questions can really get people thinking about a certain topic while others are simply answering the question. For example, by asking your students what color a leaf if then they will likely answer green. However, if you ask your students why the leaf is green, they will have to think of the proper answer. By providing my students with more complex questions I hope to help to exercise their minds so that they learn to use more critical thinking skills. One question strategy that I think I will try to implement in my classes are using the five W’s to get my students thinking about the topic. By using who, what, when, where and why questions I hope to increase my students thinking on the topic. These questions encourage the students to think more deeply about a topic beyond the surface level. By asking questions that make students think then we can get a

Interest Approach: Using Macroinvertebrates to Assess Water Quality This week’s assignment was pretty fun to set up. I set up an activity that I felt would be a good way to introduce students to macroinvertebrates in a safe and clean manner. While also introducing them to how biologist use macroinvertebrates to assess the quality of a water body. My classmates also seemed to enjoy this activity. However, there were a few things that I noticed about this activity that I would need to fix and am in the process of fixing. The first is that I was not clear on the directions right off the bat. This could lead to confusion amongst my students. As it also confused me, because I wasn’t quite sure what I had already told them. To fix this issue I will be putting the instructions into the presentation, as well as verbally giving them to my students before the activity starts. By doing so I hope to alleviate confusion for both myself and my students. The second thing I would like to

This week’s readings show the importance of not only varying your teaching methods but also choosing the right teaching method for the content and available time. The readings also included how the objectives of a lesson can affect the format of the lesson. Based on what you want your students to get from the lesson the objectives can help you to frame the lesson. When creating your objectives, you will need to take into account the mastery that you want your students to have over a specific topic. Once you know how well you want your students to understand a concept you can use Bloom’s Taxonomy to create your objectives. With objectives using higher cognitive skills being connected to higher points within bloom’s taxonomy. Group work can help your students to achieve the objectives of the lesson depending upon the students’ background knowledge of the topic. If it is a topic that they already know fairly well or have some background knowledge of having them work together can help