My Ag Ed Journey

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...