Instruction and Planning

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 to build important connections with the information. However, you can’t always use group work as it is not always the best option for instruction. The key to group work is that it needs to be used under the right circumstances and using it all the time would likely be more detrimental than helpful.

The first connection between these readings and my student teaching internship is the need for varied lesson types. I don’t want my students to become bored or expectant during my lessons. If they are able to predict how I am going to teach them on a day to day basis then that is a clue that I need to change how I present materials. Granted I do want structure in my classrooms, for example starting with bell work and ending with a closing activity. Beyond there is a definite structure to my lessons I want my students to be surprised or at least not expectant as to what will come next during class.

The second main connection is that no matter what kind of lesson is being presented it needs to be well structured. Even lectures, which some people believe to be relatively simple and easy lessons to give need to have a definite outline of the order in which the information is presented. By providing an outline with the important information you can better keep track of what you want to say and when. This will help you to not only progress through the lesson but also find your place if you get off track. By creating lessons with a good structure, you will also make it easier for substitutes and other individuals to present the lesson that you create.

The third main connection is that each lesson type has its own main components. While all lesson types are meant to teach students specific information/skills they do it in slightly different ways. No matter the lesson type there will always be an attention-getter to introduce the lesson and a closing to tie the information together. The middle of the lesson is the part that varies from one lesson type to the next, with only key elements remaining consistent. By providing different lesson types in my student teaching I can provide a well-structured environment while also providing a dynamic classroom experience for my students.

Outside of AEE 412 one class that I feel these readings connected the best with is Ag. Mech. I feel this way because there are three key pieces to this material. The classroom instruction, the demonstrations, and the hands-on learning experience. These three types of teaching experiences are all provided within this class, providing variety in an important way. If this class was instructed solely through classroom instruction, we would be unlikely to gain much from it. As this class relies heavily on learning hands-on skills if we are not actively participating in this class then we would be unlikely to learn all we needed to.

The second course this material relates to is AEE 413, while instructional planning doesn’t only cover what will be taught in the classroom that is a part of it. This class covers how to plan the classroom portion of agricultural education as well as SAE and FFA. By learning the different ways to best plan for instruction you will be able to create the best all-around program possible. Planning for activities that support your curriculum and teaching style outside of the class time you are able to further promote learning within your students. They can also use these activities to connect what they have learned into real-world situations which will help them to retain the information long term.

The most important connection between both readings and our classroom material is that it isn’t enough to cover the material. We need to ensure that our students are actually retaining the information that they are being given. If what is being taught is not staying within the students' minds then the lessons are useless. We need to use varied techniques that take the students abilities and the lesson content. If we can make engaging lessons, using the best possible teaching structure with challenging objectives we can provide the best possible education to our students. Taking this into account by using what we learned in our classes and in these readings, we will be able to provide the best lessons possible.