Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning

While there are many connections between student teaching and the assigned readings, I feel that the following may connect the best. The first is learning to use different methods of teaching and learning to improve your educational environment. Learning new methods for teaching and learning is key to becoming a good teacher. Good teachers not only use a variety of teaching methods they also find the methods that work best for themselves and their students. This will improve the educational environment for both the teachers and the students.  By varying my future teaching methods, I will be able to create a more interactive and engaging environment for my students. The second connection is how the regular use of different teaching methods will create a more enriching educational environment. A part of the use of different methods for teaching and learning is related to the planning of daily activities with students. By planning different types of lessons for each day, or every few days, I can keep my students from getting bored with their lessons. By keeping students invested in their lessons and interested in what they are learning they are more likely to retain more of what they learn in their lessons. The third connection that I want to focus on is selecting the unit of instruction. This connection would be put into place before the prior one as knowing what to teach comes before how you will teach it. By determining what you wish to teach you are able to then decide how you wish to teach it. Each of these three factors related to teaching and learning in a way where they can impact how well your students are able to learn.

Additionally, there are more connections that connect well with the courses that I have taken on my journey. The first connection is with creating written plans for lessons. This equates to the lesson plans that we are learning how to create for our different classes. By creating lesson plans we have a structured plan for what we intend to teach during each class period with our students. The second connection is with the integrated course design. We are currently learning how to create effective lesson plans and different methods to teach the lessons that we prepare. By learning the skills needed to integrate our lesson plans with the facilities we have available, we are able to plan the best lessons possible.

From the readings, I think that the triangulated connection would be how what we are learning in our classes now connects with what we will be doing in our student teaching. The information we learn, in regards to lesson planning and how to vary our classes, will play a key role in determining how we will conduct our student teaching classes this upcoming spring. Due to this everything that we learn can greatly impact our student teaching experience, as well as our students’ during our time there.

Newcomb, L.H., McCracken, J.D., Warmbrod, J.R., & Whittington, M.S. (2004). Methods of teaching agriculture. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. Chapter 5 - Planning for Instruction (26 pages)