Final Thoughts on Lab

Lab this semester was not exactly as I expected. I knew from talking to previous cohorts and watching the videos during final presentations, how the basic format would be; but I didn't know how much lab could change the way I think about teaching. During our very first lab, we picked a random topic and had to teach it the following week to our peers. Looking back now, I would not teach that lesson the same way I did then, nor many of my lessons I taught throughout the semester. The changes I would make to many of my lessons are not because I didn't write them as best I could originally, but because now I know better techniques to use to teach them. Now I know more classroom management strategies, and I know what to do when I want my students to be more engaged, and less distracted.

Teaching my peers was both easy and difficult at the same time - on the one hand, they were your friends, you knew them and knew their personality, regardless of what character role-card they pulled you knew how to "manage" their behavior. It also took away some of the pressure, in labs you knew it was practice and that you weren't in charge of real students yet (at least not until our Micro-teaching and LifeKnowledge labs). However, while this did decrease some of the stress, it also made teaching a little harder, for most of our lessons our "students" needed prior knowledge or some parts of our lessons didn't make sense, this sometimes made it difficult to direct questions and explain materials.

Overall, while I learned a lot about classroom management and planning and implementing of lessons from lab, my biggest takeaway has been reflection. While I hated teaching on camera, having the ability to not only reflect on my experiences through writing our blogs, but also being able to watch and comment on not only my own teaching videos but also those of my peers, was extremely helpful. Though using the technology of ThereNow to watch, upload, and comment on videos was sometimes difficult, and keeping track of all the reflective requirements was frustrating, it was very useful and helped me pick up on things I may not have realized I was and wasn't doing while teaching, and letting me learning from what my peers were and weren't doing when they were teaching.

So while lab was sometimes frustrating, stressful, and not always the best thing to have at 8AM, I learned a lot and while being one of the first few to go through it every week sometimes felt like being a guinea pig, it was nice to go through it without the bias of hearing about anything from the cohort. I am glad that lab is over and I do feel more prepared for student teaching than I was at the beginning of the semester, though I know I still have more to learn. Here's to finishing one semester of learning and reflection and moving onto the next one.

Creativity Challenge!

During our final lab session together, we had an exercise in tapping into our creative side when developing lessons for our classroom. Each of us came prepared with a unit plan that we would be teaching in the spring and went on an adventure to the local dollar store where we were to find five items that we could use to help us deliver at least one of our lessons in our unit this spring. I chose my Intro to Ag Careers unit for my 8th graders, where I'll teach my students about some of many different careers available in the agriculture industry, so I chose five items that tie back to various careers. My plan is that during my first few lessons and throughout the unit, I would present my students with different items or pictures and my students would have to discern how they tie back to an agricultural career or sector of the industry; items including a bar of soap (dairy), dog treats (beef/veterinary), a feather boa (feathers/poultry), an artificial flower (horticulture), and a set of small plastic containers (research).

This was a fun lab that allowed us to think outside the box when planning lessons, which I know will be necessary for two main reasons. First, because utilizing creativity in our classrooms can only increase the engagement of our students, allowing us to bring more variability into our lessons. Second, because budgets will always be tight for schools and teachers, and knowing how to think outside the box to find materials for lessons and classes, can only help us stretch our budgets longer. Agriculture teachers are known to be masters of acquiring materials and equipment through donations, partnerships, and grants, but even being able to stretch it in simple ways, like knowing what materials can be found and/or made from the dollar store can help teachers, especially new teachers like myself.

Creativity, both from ourselves and allowing room for our students to be creative, can only make our classrooms, and our teaching, better. While I may not consider myself a naturally creative person, with use of social media sites such as Pinterest to help me find creative ideas, and the local discount stores to find materials, I think even I can some creativity into my classroom, and I look forward to seeing what I come up with.

"Creativity is intelligence having fun." - Albert Einstein 

Micro-Teaching @ Midd-West

As one of our last labs of the semester we got to embark on one of the scariest adventures - teaching actual students! We conducted three day micro-teaching units, where we had the same class of students for three consecutive days and had to develop a "mini-unit" of three lessons. For my micro-teaching, I was lucky enough to be paired up with Mr. David Bittner at Midd-West High School and I couldn't have gotten a better placement. Mr. Bittner matched me with his 1st period Veterinary Science Anatomy & Physiology class, where I taught a three day introduction to the muscular system transitioning from his wrap-up of the skeletal system.








Teaching this subject was a great match, as I will also be teaching a Veterinary Science course this spring during my student teaching, including a unit on anatomy and physiology. Over the course of the three days I covered voluntary versus involuntary muscles, the three muscle types (skeletal, cardiac, and smooth) and their functions, and the hardest part - the superficial muscle groups of the feline. Even with the use of videos, a "Go Get It" activity and the help of a special furry friend, figuring out how to teach this information at the right cognitive and enthusiasm level was hard and taught me quite a few things.

First, timing is everything. One of my biggest obstacles over the three days was giving enough time to all of the different parts of my lesson, while still having enough time to cover all the material and have a wrap-up at the end of each day's lesson. This was the hardest part as I always felt I was running out of time no matter how I adjusted my lessons; this taught me the second most important thing - as long as you have a plan it will all be fine. While I may have struggled with my timing, I always had my lesson fully planned out and so I always knew exactly where I was going with everything.









The third thing I learned was that enthusiasm is everything. Any struggles I felt when I was teaching the Midd-West students would have been a lot less if I had been more enthusiastic. Naturally, I am not a very enthusiastic person, and spending three days in front of real students, while on camera, in front of their teacher who I highly respect is a nerve wracking experience to say the least. While my nerves kept me from looking towards Mr. Bittner or my fellow cohort members for encouragement, I was lucky enough to previously know a couple of the students in class which made it a little easier when calling on students to answer questions or take part in an activity. I know that developing a good level of enthusiasm in the classroom is something I will continue to need to work on, but I think that as I develop a relationship with my students and become more comfortable in the classroom, this will become easier and help me move past some of the other obstacles including proper use of timing. And if nothing else I know that having a furry friend in the room can always make a classroom a little more enthusiastic.

LifeKnowledge Lesson @ Tri Valley

The last teaching lab we had was our second time teaching real students, only this time it was with our own students at our cooperating centers. Since we only taught for one lesson, during one class period it was a little less intimidating than micro-teaching, but it was with our own students, so hopefully we made a good impression before the spring. For my lab, I taught my Ag Science I students a LifeKnowledge lesson on Understanding Beliefs, Character, Integrity, and Values.

My Ag Science I class is primarily 9th graders, during the last period of the day and I taught my lesson on the Thursday before Thanksgiving break, so to say that my students were rowdy would be an understatement. Utilizing the LifeKnowledge lesson plan took some of the pre-teaching stress away, as the majority of the lesson plan was already created, but teaching my first lesson to my students in front of my cooperating teacher was still stressful. Though the students were a little antsy, and the class seemed to fly by without enough time to finish everything, the lesson went well. Handing my students that day was my first real time dealing with classroom management, and lucky for me I was able to learn the names of all 18 of my students' names within the first few minutes of class, and being able to call on my students made a clear impression on them and my cooperating teacher, nipping any possible discipline problems in the bud right away and helping to keep their focus

Having this first opportunity to get a taste of teaching some of my students at my cooperating center before the spring, was really helpful, and while I know I still have some things to learn and improve upon with planning, implementing, and timing of my lessons, I think that I have at least one technique to help with enthusiasm in the classroom - simply learning my students' names quickly. Being able to call on my students individually started to create some familiarity between my students and myself, and while I know that I won't remember all their names by spring, I know that it's a simple step I can take to make myself better in the classroom.

#TransformationTuesday - Poem: Where I'm From

Earlier in the semester, in my AEE 311 course on Youth Organizations & Leadership, we wrote poems to describe where we were from, because without understanding where we are from we can never truly understand where our peers and/or future students are coming from. The below poem, Where I'm From, is just one way for me to describe the non-agricultural aspects of where I come from, and to describe the beginnings of what has transformed me into the person I am today.

Where I'm From

I'm from the land of hoagies, 

wooder ice and "Yo Adrian"

I'm from tiny two walls, sometimes three, 

full of furballs, games and music

I'm from haunted rooms, records, 

binders and photobooks of memories long gone

I'm from brick walls, concrete patios, 

closest park is full of headstones

I'm from Mommom and Poppop, 

the house of Peats and RePeats, 

Elf's, Squirts and Mountain Man

I'm from sweet potato casserole, 

coleslaw and mincemeat pie

I'm from the red, white, and blue 

sirens, guns, uniforms, and badges

I'm from the smell of hay, leather and dirt 

mixed with packed bodies on buses and EL's

I'm from yelling, screaming, 

crying, and laughing

I'm from Bells and Bridges, 

Rivers and Marble Steps

I'm from 

brotherly and sisterly

National FFA Convention Advisor Edition

Just A few weeks ago I got to enjoy one of my favorite parts of the year, the National FFA Convention, only this time it was a little different; instead of wearing my familiar blue corduroy jacket, I was wearing my blue blazer, my unofficial advisor jacket. 

I got to spend over 10 hours each way with a great group of five students from the Tri Valley FFA chapter, where I will be student teaching this spring. I learned a lot on this trip, not only just about how to fill the advisor role and how to work with these five students who will be some of the many I'll be teaching in the spring. I also learned how much of a family Ag. teachers can be, and how welcoming most of them are to new people in the field like my cohort and I.  

But this convention wasn't like many others, I've gone on other trips as a chaperone with FFA members, so chaperoning my five kids was not much different than chaperoning any of the other trips I've gone on with my own chapter. But what was different this year was I made a point of looking through a multicultural lens when I looked back at my National FFA Convention experiences I had over the past week. 

As someone who comes from a pretty diverse FFA chapter, the lack of diversity that we see in the FFA is not that surprising to me; for me that was the most depressing part. While other members of my cohort are amazed at the lack of diversity that they can see when they look at FFA members I'm not. For me it's something I've been dealing with for the past 10 years, ever since I first put on my blue corduroy FFA jacket. 

However, when I look at convention through this multicultural lens, while I am depressed at the fact that I don't see more diverse FFA members, I am impressed by how much the National FFA is pushing the "We Are FFA" program and how National FFAand agriculture industry partners and supporters were pushing the "#myAgStory" in order to show FFA members and others, that agriculture is a very diverse field, and with a wide range of people working and living within this diverse industry. 

What was most interesting to me, was how the stories I would hear from advisors saying how their students really just need to get out of their county every now and then to learn that there is a great big world around them are not just stories, they're serious. There are students who need to travel outside their county in order to realize that there is a bigger, wider world out there. The funniest example I have of this is when we were traveling in our van back to Tri Valley, on the last leg of our journey home. We're on the homestretch and we were discussing with our students what they did and did not enjoy about Convention, what stood out the most to them and if there was anything they were really going to miss or were really excited to get home for, and right away one of my students said he was really excited to be home and not have to eat any more of that "city food." For me this was really funny and I asked him what he meant because I knew where they been eating all week and they had mostly just been eating convention food, which is mostly burgers, chicken tenders and fries and one night I made a point of taking them out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. 

This is when I learned some of my students really need to get out of Schuykill County every now and then because my student went on to say that he didn't like the city food because it was fried and it was Italian and Italia is a city and he was just really glad to be home for home-cooked food. Well we all had a chuckle at this when we reminded him that Italy is a country and not a city, so he couldn't put Italian food from the restaurant into that category of "city food." But it also made me realize why did they think convention food was city food when it was the same type of food you get at any fast food joint. While only one student made the comments the other students were nodding their heads  along with him in the van when he was saying this and so for me I know that I want to try to make it a point to find out from my students if there are any of these "city myths" that exist in the school and see if I can break down any of those barriers that already exist. 

This is really important for me, not only because I think it'll help my students get a better understanding of where I'm coming from but also because my students will be attending a leadership conference at my high school in the spring in the city, and I want to make sure they are both prepared for that experience of going to Philadelphia and then also looking forward to it and knowing that the students that they meet at that conference are not going to be any different than them even if they might look a little different. 

While those comments related to the "big city mouse, little country mouse" were quite interesting for me and I think that they're going to make for very interesting spring and lots of really great experiences with my students, what I was most impressed by was when my students went to the opening session and watched the motivational speaker Nick Vujicic. The motivational speaker was great and he used humor and real-life stories to show that everyone is the same and everyone should be loved and appreciated for what they bring to the table, even if they don't have any arms or legs. As soon as Nick came on stage and started talking my students' eyes were glued to him onstage and I understand why because I was the same way. Even though when we were reflecting later that night on what the speaker was saying most of what my students mentioned was the jokes and the funny stories he had I was impressed that they were still getting his message. 

They all seemed to understand the anti-bullying and appreciating everyone message behind his stories and I hope that when I'm with the students all the time in the spring that I'll see the evidence of it and see that they brought this message back to their school or at least that they are encouraging this message within their FFA chapter. 

Overall, I had a great time serving as the adviser for the tri-Valley FFA and I can't wait to get to work with the students on an every day basis and knowing how much work needs to be done and seeing that I think my students already have an open mind they just need to be exposed to more I'm really excited to see how much I can do with the students when I am with them all the time and see how much I can encourage them to grow when I'm exposing them to other sides of agriculture and culture that they may not be used to. 

Inquiry Based Instruction: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #9

This is what we want to avoid by using
strategies like Inquiry Based Instruction.

Inquiry Based Instruction focuses on making your students the real directors of their learning. While the Problem Solving Approach allowed students more ownership of their learning, the Inquiry Based Instruction teaching technique takes it one step further and has the students in charge of the content delivered and the delivery method (depending on the implementation, and the constraints set by the teacher). Inquiry Based Instruction relies on and fosters high levels of student engagement and provides opportunities for teachers to incorporate other subjects into their classroom, enhancing their students' reading, math and science skills.

Based on the scientific method, Inquiry Based Instruction utilizes 6 stages of the Inquiry Cycle: 1) Inquisition, 2) Acquisition, 3) Supposition, 4) Implementation, 5) Summation, and 6) Exhibition. Students can move through this cycle several times depending on the content taught and the delivery method chosen, and it makes them engaged in each part of the learning, from deciding what they will be learning (the question they will inquire), brainstorming how they will acquire the knowledge/solution needed for the situation, the planning and implementing of an experiment, and developing and sharing their findings.

Since there is no one correct way to incorporate Inquiry Based Instruction into your classroom, there are many different methods for implementing it into your classroom, but the commonality among all the methods is the importance of student engagement. On paper, Inquiry Based Instruction lessons may appear unstructured, and this can be true, which is also why some teachers may struggle with implementing this technique. While many teachers agree that Inquiry Based Instruction increases higher order thinking in their classroom and provides connections between their classes and their students' other core classes, it has the stigma of only being appropriate for advanced students. Due to the focus on moving towards higher order cognitive levels I can easily see where this stigma comes from, and I know that thinking about how I would incorporate this into my classroom, I struggle as to how I would prepare my students for this technique. But I believe that this is an important point - Inquiry Based Instruction is not just for advanced students, but there needs to be proper set up before between the teacher and students for it to be effective.

Need to make sure your students have the correct 
safety equipment when conducting wet labs!

To try and better prepare myself for attempting to implement Inquiry Based Instruction in my classroom, I attended two of the NAAE Teacher World workshops while at the National FFA Convention this past week in Louisville, KY. These workshops were sponsored by DuPont and facilitated by agricultural educators from across the country who have completed their National Agriscience Ambassador Academy.

My first workshop was "Chicken Little, Chicken Big" and taught how to determine the optimal, threshold, and detrimental levels of a substance using the scenario of feeding nutritional supplements to a flock of chickens. In this workshop, each of us (the students) were given a random sample of 10 chickens of a specific age out of a flock of 1000, and had to determine what the optimal, threshold, and detrimental levels of the supplement were based on the data we had on their growth rates each week. This activity teaches a student how to use given data points to determine the answer to a more abstract question before the answer is not necessarily important, but the reasoning behind the chosen answer and the process used to determine it are important (depending on the context this is being taught, if you are actually raising animals the correct answer would be important).

My second workshop was "Vet Detective: Tracking the Spread" and I really enjoyed this workshop and am excited to use a variation of it in my classroom this spring. This activity focused on determining which student had the original infected animal, Patient 0, based on the recorded interactions of all the animals found to be infected after a set number of interactions. I really like this because of the higher order thinking involved, the many variations it could be spun into, and also in the simplicity of its delivery. Each of the animals assigned to the students had its own scenario or biography and these could be utilized to varying degrees in the students' deductions of who was infected based on the teacher's level of questioning. The workshop provided the lab handout for the activity which included the materials needed and procedures utilized, but the teachers facilitating the workshop demonstrated several teaching strategies that I think can really increase the level of Inquiry in the lesson. While we (the students) were given the handout with procedures, we had to read it and then create pictorial versions of the procedures, which taps into the visual modality of learning and also requires students to analyze each step instead of just rote reading. They also had us develop our own data tables before showing us the example that we used during the workshop, which provides students the opportunity to decide what is the important data points you are looking for and the importance of labeling data.

Overall, while I am still nervous about developing my own Inquiry Based Instruction lesson plans and implementing it into my classroom, I can see the potential for all the different ways it can be utilized and how it can increase the amount of higher order cognitive learning I am using. I am looking forward to learning more about the topic this week and watching some Inquiry Based Instruction experts in action when we take our field trip to Greenwood High School.

Teaching Problem Solving Approach: AEE 412 Lab #3

The Problem Solving Approach lab was the hardest lab to teach so far, as it's a technique that many of us are still learning how to implement. We've all seen it used before but with varying levels of success. While this lab was the hardest lesson to write and implement, for me it was also the first lab I felt really comfortable teaching even though it was for my hardest to formulate unit.

For my Problem Solving Approach lab, I tackled several topics I was most nervous about - the Problem Solving Approach, my Community-Based Unit of Instruction, and (hypothetically) my Ag Practicum class students. To give a brief explanation of the latter two topics - in the spring, my 6th period class is Ag Practicum, which is a class my students who are enrolled in Ag Science I-IV can take concurrently. This course provides them with additional time during the day to work in the two ag. shops and complete individual projects and is a great resource for students to complete tasks related to their SAE's or school events (for example, the ag. students last spring helped build the large anchor decorations for the nautical themed prom).

This class is where I am incorporating my Community-Based Unit of Instruction, where I am using the forested land on the school's campus and the school's forest stewardship plan to teach my students a little bit about forestry, native wildlife, incorporate their woodworking skills in creating "bat boxes" as habitats and create a form of educational material for the community. To address these areas and incorporate the  Problem Solving Approach, my lesson set up the transition of my unit from learning about native wildlife to creating a local solution to the problem of a declining bat population.

What I liked about my Problem Solving Approach lesson:

• I felt really comfortable delivering my lesson. I think this is because I wasn't actually delivering any content during this lesson, I was just setting up the questions so that my students thought about the right topics and directed the learning, it felt like some of the pressure was off of me. 
• For this lesson plan I created a 1 page handout for myself that pulled out all the parts of my lesson plan that I was actually going to be demonstrating during my lab. I utilized this handout to teach from instead of my full lesson plan because it broke all of my content and steps down into just a few key words or phrases that I would understand what they meant and so that I wouldn't get lost in all the words in my actual lesson plan, where I have everything written out in more detail so that someone else would understand what I am thinking.
• I liked that while my students were developing the answers to my various questions about the problem of a declining bat population, I was able to focus them back towards my end goal of the students suggesting we build "bat boxes" by directing them to agree on a solution we can implement at the local level.
• I also really liked how I handled behavior issues in this lesson. None of my students acted out but I did have side conversations that I was able to pull into the wider class discussion, and while we did have tensions rise at one point because of conflicting student views, I think I was able to sideline that tension before it developed into anything.
• I liked that I incorporated the "Go Get It" e-moment into this lesson so that the students were able to get up and move since a lot of the content of this lesson would require them to work at their desks either individually or in groups, and I like that this e-moment also provided me a way to teach the students some content about bats and get them thinking about facts and issues related to bats before I gave them the email scenario setting up our problem.

What I can improve about my Problem Solving Approach lesson:

• I need to increase my enthusiasm - while I felt more comfortable during this lesson, I am still struggling on showing my students that I am enthusiastic about being there with them. This is a trait I think I am constantly going to have to focus on. 
• I need to avoid giving students too much of the information right away and instead provide them the time and opportunity to tell me the information, including having them actually state what the problem is that we're addressing and not me telling them and having them agree with me.
• I need to be careful that I always have clarity in my instructions and expectations, both verbally and when writing them on the board for students to follow.

Overall, I'm really happy with how my lesson went and I hope that I can find multiple ways to incorporate the Problem Solving Approach into my classes because I think that my students will really like it and I think that if I set it up correctly it can relieve some of the pressure I feel in front of the classroom and allow me to be more comfortable and enthusiastic.

Evaluating Learning: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #8

If there is one phrase that I think makes most students at the very least cringe, if not break out in tears, it's the following: "Alright class, clear off your desks except for a writing utensil, it's time to take the test/exam/quiz/etc..."

Evaluations and assessments can sometimes feel like necessary evils in a classroom - students usually don't want to take them and teachers don't necessarily want to grade them, but everyone knows they're required to show proof of learning. Now while assessments in some form are required to show evidence of student performance in our classrooms, there's no right or wrong answer as to how we can deliver our assessments. There are many different forms and types of evaluations and assessments, especially depending on if they are being used as formative (during learning) assessments or summative (final, at the end) assessments. 

Equal Testing =/= Fair Testing

Some assessments may be performance or skill based; others can be project based, focusing on the process and end-product of a project. In-class questioning, ticket outs, writing assignments, informal check-ins and of course the almighty test/exam/quiz are also all types of assessments, and any of these can be utilized based on your preferences and your students' learning styles but what is really important regardless of assessment type are the questions - "Does this assessment accurately test my students' knowledge and/or skills that I wanted them to learn? Is the assessment fair for all of my students? And what other factors could prohibit my students from performing well on the assessment?"

Answering these questions can be difficult depending on the type of assessment chosen, but necessary to ensure that they are really measuring student learning based on the learning objectives you had for the lesson/unit. You also want to make sure that your assessments are fair for all your students, but that does not always mean that all students need to take the same exact assessment. In my junior year of high school, my American History teacher would give everyone what appeared to be the same exam at the same time to complete during the class period after we had finished a unit. However, if you looked the exams side by side, you could see that there were usually three different versions of the exam with differing amounts of multiple choice, true/false, short answer, and essay questions, but all of the exams tested on the same content. When I came back as a college student and he showed me this, he said he used the different exam formats based on the students' ability to perform on each type of test and that he would adjust which format he gave each student depending on his perception of how they were grasping the material (if a student seemed to be struggling with certain information they got Test C, Test B, etc.). He utilized this technique because he said at the end of the day he was able to determine if all of his students had comprehended the basic information he wanted them to, and he was able to minimize the number of poor class grades due to assessments.

This question tests a student's ability to read and answer questions, but not necessarily the content taught.
There shouldn't be loopholes in our assessments for students to find.

In addition to determining if our assessments are evaluating our students' comprehension of the learning objectives, and determining the fairest way to evaluate all of our students, we also need to know what other factors can impact our students' performance on assessments. Test anxiety is typically the biggest factor impacting student performance on assessments and can be influenced by many different things. While this is usually associated with the traditional written tests/exam/quiz formats, anytime a student feels "tested" they can become overwhelmed with their stress and anxiety, negatively impacting their performance. This testing anxiety can be impacted by the student's internal feelings towards testing, their ability to strategize and prepare for the assessment, the other students' behaviors/attitudes towards testing and possibly the performance of their peers, and the teacher/classroom atmosphere. Teachers should be calm about assessments, stressing their importance on the students' learning growth and less about the grade, without downplaying its value too low. Teachers should also be positive about assessments - teachers who are upset on test day make students stressed on test day. Teachers can also teach students strategies to prepare for assessments and manage stress which can help students walk into an assessment less anxious and then continue to decrease their anxiety during the assessment. If teachers decide to use different assessments for different students, they need to also remember to not draw attention to these differences or the reasons for them, as that could lead to the other students assigning a stigma to that student, increasing the testing anxiety. This is something that I think my history teacher did very well as it was never apparent that there were multiple test forms because he made them all look the same and he individually passed them out so you didn't notice anything different. This also meant that if you struggled on one unit and shifted to a different format for the next test to help, you didn't know it so you (as the student) never felt dumb based on the test format.  

The biggest take-away I have from our readings is that as long as we remember to address those three questions above (Learning Objectives, Fairness, Other Impacting Factors) the assessment format does not matter. What really matters is that we remember that we are teaching our students content and that we will use various forms of assessment to evaluate their grasp of the content. We are not teaching our students how to do well on assessments and then also teaching content. Student learning is our first priority, not the ability to perform well on standardized tests (though if our students understand the content well, they should perform well on the tests).

To help us move forward in our teaching careers, I found the following three resources that I think can be helpful when thinking about and/or developing evaluations and assessments for your students: Here is a link to tips and strategies for students, parents and teachers relating to reducing test anxiety. This is a list of over 20 different strategies teachers can use everyday in their classrooms as assessments. See the table below for a great chart connecting types of learning objectives with example assessments:

Problem-Based Learning (PBL): AEE 412 Weekly Writing #7

As agricultural educators we not only want to teach our students content knowledge and technical skills, we also want to teach them what are referred to as 21st Century Skills - communication, cooperation, and critical thinking. One of the key techniques we can use to teach our students critical thinking is by using problem-based or problem-solving learning. This past week and this coming week we focused on this technique and how we can use it in our classrooms. Essentially this technique shifts the transfer of learning from teacher-to-student to student-to-student-to-teacher, by providing the students with a scenario or problem related to the class's content that the students must develop solutions to and teach the class.

In class we discussed the various ways this could be used in an agricultural classroom, depending on whether you were utilizing it as a single solution or multi-solution problem, and whether it was simple or complex. Examples included: having students solve a trouble-shooting issue with an engine in a small gas engines class, discovering what is causing illness/problems in animals or plants in the program (of course if it's serious, you take care of the issue first without telling your students the cause/solution), or in an environmental science or agricultural issues class present the students with an issue such as global climate change and have students develop possible solutions.

As you can see based on just the few scenarios above, problem-based learning can come in many shapes and sizes in the classroom, which means it can be adapted to any classroom and any content. But how do we truly implement it in our classrooms? How do we set up our students so that they have the necessary skills and content knowledge so that they can successfully develop solutions to the problems we present them, without giving them too much and defeating the purpose of the problem-based learning approach? How do we know that we're presenting the information at a time and in a way that's relevant? What if a student presents a situation related to their crops or livestock at home, or even a current news topic that is a great opportunity for problem-based learning but I haven't set my students up yet to be able to use it.

Problem-based learning is a technique I would love to use in my classes, yet I am struggling to incorporate it into my lesson plans without shifting to a project-based approach. I'm sure in the next week we will learn more about both of these approaches and how to properly set up our lessons to incorporate them but for now, it's still a little confusing. I know I have been in classes where problem-based learning has been utilized but I don't think I've seen the set-up beforehand to understand how it worked. Some resources I have were this Illinois Ag in the Classroom link to several inquiry-based lessons. They are written for a younger grade range but I think they could be modified to complement high school or middle school lesson plans. Everyone should also check out some of the NAAE Teachers' World workshops during National FFA Convention, based on their descriptions some of them should incorporate problem-based learning but I'm sure all of them will be helpful. 

Hopefully this week we can decipher the "problems" related to setting up your students to be successful in problem-based learning.

Individual Teaching Techniques: 412 Weekly Writing #6

The past few weeks we've learned about effective teaching characteristics, planning and designing curriculum, interest approaches, and student engagement. We've discussed the multiple intelligences, learning modalities, learning styles and cognitive levels (good ol' Bloom's). Most recently we've discussed how all of our learners are different, and how different teaching techniques can best reach all of our different learners, specifically the use of effective questioning and group teaching techniques. This past week we introduced individual teaching techniques.

There are many different reasons to utilize individual teaching techniques, but they all stem from the same important principle - all learners are different. As educators, even if we had a specialized class where all of our students are homogeneous in some characteristic, they are never going to all learn 100% the same way. Even students characterized at the same academic level (track) will all learn differently based on the multiple intelligences and multiple modalities, and multiple cognitive levels will be addressed throughout your content so your students can learn the information you want them to. Students also need variability just to comprehend what they are learning. Students can typically only pay attention to a specific topic for approximately 1 minute per age (so 10 minutes for a ten year old), capping out at about a 15 minute attention span so you as the teacher have to switch things up just so you're students can naturally pay attention, so avoid activities that take longer than 20 minutes if there's no variability because students will zone out and lose focus (just ask anyone in my cohort who went to the almost 5 hour CPR and First Aid training....).

This need for variability, differentiation, and individualized learning is why a variety of teaching techniques are needed, and the individual teaching techniques can not only address this need but also other needs of our students and other accomplishments we want them to strive for. These individual teaching techniques encourage our students to become more independent, and dig deeper into what they're learning. They learn how to utilize multiple opinions - knowledge transfer is not a one-way street from teacher to student, it should be a multi-lane highway where students are teaching and learning from each other and the teacher (and the teacher can be learning from their students as well). They should learn how to analyze and evaluate information, including what they gain from their peers and teachers, and what they discover on their own, and finally teaching students how to learn. 

Teaching student how to learn through the use of individual teaching techniques may at first sound a little crazy (then again you find me an agricultural educator who isn't at least a little crazy), but to me it also makes perfect sense - the best expert on how we best acquire knowledge and comprehend learning is always going to be ourselves. So once you teach your students how to learn, they can discover what works best for themselves and learn how they can be active in their own learning and gain the most out of any learning experience.

So once we understood the goal of individual teaching techniques, our textbook discussed five different techniques: supervised study, experiments, independent study, student notebooks and sheets (information, assignment, and skill). All of these strategies can be utilized in various ways in your agricultural education program but what stuck out to me was how all of these techniques are utilized through the Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) portion of our program. The SAE itself is primarily an independent study conducted by the student, and allows a student to dig deeper into whatever area of agriculture they are interested in, but the student is also under the supervision of either an employer or parent in addition to the teacher, through SAE visits to check student's progress, making it also a supervised study. SAE projects can be experimental in scope, but students also incorporate experiments whenever they have to make decisions about a project, from which feed or equipment to use or which record-keeping system to utilize. Record-keeping also brings in the techniques of the student notebook and the various sheets that can be used as students keep track of their activities, their skill development, their finances and their day to day contributions towards their projects.

After reading about these various techniques, I know that it is important to utilize all of them in the classroom, in cooperation with the group teaching techniques, but I also know that in order to have a fully integrated intra-curricular program, we have to encourage our students to participate in FFA opportunities and develop their SAE projects because those are the pathways where they can dig deeper and discover their individual passions. To help with this and encourage more discussion on these topics, check out the National FFA website to learn more about SAE's and check out this Pinterest Board link for lots of creative ideas on how to use interactive student notebooks in your classroom.

Unit Plan - First Time, But Not the Last Time

So much planning. It feels like this year, and the next few, are days of constant planning. For the past few weeks, the days have been filled with writing various lesson plans for labs and FFA conferences, and with our first adventures at the big obstacle - unit plans. Through writing this first unit plan and beginning to work on my others, I've learned that unit plans are almost a necessary evil - they are really helpful and great to write cohesive lesson plans from, but when you're just starting out they can be really intimidating, especially since we my not know exactly what it is we want to teach yet, or for how long, etc.

There are so many parts to a unit plan that add to its intimidation, the lesson titles and objectives, materials, unit goals, resources, academic (not just agricultural) standards, unit evaluations, not to mention all the adaptations, accommodations, enhancements and connections, but I think the hardest and most important part is at the top of my unit plan - the unit rationale. The rationale, the "why are you teaching this?," "why does it matter?," the justification of why that unit is part of your instruction.

Writing the rationale for my units can be both the easiest and hardest part of preparing the unit plans, but is the best resource for writing my lesson plans for that specific unit. For my first unit plan, I wrote my Intro to Ag Careers for my 8th Grade Agriculture Rotations. This unit is the first of three units all of my 8th graders will go through and it was difficult to write it at first because I'm only providing them with a brief intro on agriculture before we spend the rest of the unit focusing on career preparation and long-term planning. I had to constantly remind myself that this unit was for 8th graders so I could be careful to not teach over their heads, but I also wanted to point them in the right direction so they could pick the right high school classes (of course, preferably agriculture classes) to set them down the path towards the education and/or career path they choose.

After having my peers review my unit plan and talking it out with several people I feel pretty good about how my unit plan is right now. I didn't have too many revisions suggested by my peers, most had to do with being careful when writing lesson objectives. One suggested revision that I really appreciated was to provide details on each of my unit assessments. Having to really think through what each assessment is, how many points it counts towards in a student's final unit grade, and where it fits in each lesson was really helpful, and prompted me to make some changes to various assessments and lessons that I think really improved the clarity of my unit.

Or your unit plan...

Writing these unit plans is difficult but I can already tell after writing the first draft and then writing one of my lesson plans for this unit that the process becomes much easier. The connection is clear, now I just have to figure out how to write all the lesson plans for all my units, which can be a little difficult since I'm not teaching an entire course, which means I'm not deciding the final assessments or course objectives.

Unit Plans: 1 down, 14 more to go!

May the odds be ever in our favor.

Effective Questioning: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #5

How many questions should I ask? How long should I wait for an answer? Are my questions too low-level for my students? Are they going over their head? Am I really asking them what I want to know about?

These are just some of the many questions I've heard my cohort and myself talk about these past few weeks as we get into the swing of lesson planning, unit planning and writing objectives. Our readings this week focused on effective questioning and individual coaching as teaching techniques, and has continued our previous classes on objectives and incorporating various cognitive levels into our teaching. It's hard to know how to answer those questions, though we are slowly getting better at it through writing objectives and teaching in our labs.

According to research, the average teacher asks between 300-400 questions a day. 300-400 A Day! Even with eight classes a day, I'm not sure how I could think of 300 questions a day, let alone ask them all. But I have learned that there are various ways to ask questions - some come in the form of objectives, some ask students to connect previous knowledge or experience to the classroom, others gauge how much students are understanding the material. No matter what the questions are, wording is very important as it affects the clarity of the question and whether it is a higher or lower level of cognition.

Questions can be at either level of cognition, as long as the questions are appropriate for the level of learning we want our students to achieve. Do we want our students to just name the four compartments of the ruminant stomach? Or do we want them to also be able to explain how the four compartments work together as part of the ruminant digestive system?

When asking questions in the classroom we have to also remember that it's important not only how we ask the question, but also how we react to students when they are answering them. We have to wait long enough after asking questions to allow students time to process what we are asking, but short enough so that we do not lose their focus. We also have to remember to genuinely reinforce and encourage students for answering questions and participating in class, while providing equal opportunities for all learners.

Learning how to properly write objectives and use questioning in the classroom will take time, but with practice we can all get better at it, and soon we'll be able to form questions at all levels of cognition. To help with this, I found a link with charts that provide examples of keywords, example objectives, activities, and assessments at each level of Bloom's Taxonomy (showing just how important Bloom is).
                                                                                                                                                                    With time, questioning will become a natural part of our teaching toolboxes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Interest Approaches: AEE 412 Lab #3

Enthusiasm. Engagement. Motivation. Interest.

These are all necessary ingredients in a successful classroom. There are other important ingredients - technical content, appropriate standards, organization and structure, practical assessments - there are many ingredients to a successful learning environment, but if there is a lack of enthusiasm and engagement no learning will occur.

This week our teaching labs focused on interest approaches and I don't think I've ever walked into an assignment feeling so prepared to then walk out/watch my video and feel so down. I felt really prepared before class - I was happy with my lesson plan for the start of my 8th grade introduction to agricultural careers class, it wasn't perfect but it was good for one of my first real lesson plans. Since I had written my unit plan for the class already I knew where I wanted the unit to go and how I wanted this lesson to start things off, I was going to utilize think-pair-share, having my students individually draw what they thought a person who has an agricultural career looks like, then pair up and discuss their drawings, creating a new combined drawing, which the students would then share out and we would have a class discussion on what is and is not an agricultural career. 

The right career can lead to being OUTRAGEOUSLY HAPPY!

In my head this all worked out great, the students had lots of ideas of careers, lots of questions, and were engaged in conversation, clearly interested in agricultural careers. Teaching about agricultural careers is important - we want students to pursue futures in agriculture, and for some students they may never really think about what they want to do "when they grow up" until they're getting ready to graduate high school, which for some can be too late. If we're lucky they have some idea, but it's never too early to start planting the seed in their minds of pursuing a career in agriculture. 

In reality things did not go as well. My written lesson plan was good, needed some improvements but I knew that. I did a better job of clearly providing my directions, both verbally and visually written on the board (which is surprising because I do not have good "whiteboard writing"). My timing felt good and I could see where my activity was going to lead into the rest of my lesson as I was leading it. And then it happened. I realized that when I split my students into groups I unintentionally created two very opposite groups, a group of the three "good" students and the group of three "problem" students (based on the roles we were each assigned to play). So my group of "good" students worked well together and came up with two different careers; my "problem" students completed the task but were slightly off track so they only came up with one real career. This led into our discussion but with fewer ideas to build from than planned and a student group lacking in energy, I could quickly feel myself becoming flustered - problem #1: lack of high energy activity =/= (doesn't equal) energized students.

And this leads us to problem #2: flustered teacher leads to nervousness which leads to decrease in already lacking enthusiasm. I am not a naturally enthusiastic person - I already know this. There are very few situations where I visibly show natural enthusiasm (and the percentage of those situations happening without an animal around is extremely low). However, this lack of natural enthusiasm does not work well in a classroom. Now don't mistake my lack of visible enthusiasm for lack of enjoyment - I really do love agricultural education and it's definitely a career for me and not a job (or really a lifestyle not a career). 

For a successful transfer of learning, students must be engaged in the learning process, they must be motivated to learn, they must be interested in what is occurring in the classroom - hence why we use interest approaches to engage students into what they are learning that day. However, a key part of an interest approach is the enthusiasm of the teacher, you cannot assume that students will be enthusiastic about something unless you (the teacher) are also genuinely enthusiastic about what you are teaching. You have to "hook" students into caring about what they are learning that day, they don't do it themselves.

If only it was that easy....

So after rambling about all of this, watching my video and listening to some of my peer feedback I think there are three main things I really need to focus on improving: 

#1 - Have a plan B: if your activity is not going as planned have a way you can spin it back on track (planning for both our classroom experiences and lab experiences, they might be different)

#2 - Don't let the nervousness/fluster take over: not sure how to help this other than lots of practice because like I've said before, I'm naturally terrified of being in front of people (again I know, does not make sense for this career)

#3 - The really IMPORTANT one -> Be More ENTHUSIASTIC: again I don't know how to do that without coming across as not genuine so anyone with advice please throw some my way, but I know it is a necessarily improvement

So that's it. Another week down. Ten (approximately) more to go.

May the odds be ever in our favor #PSUAgEd15

The First Day of School: AEE 412 Lab #2

The First Day of School... never thought I could be more terrified to stand in front of my peers/students than during our second lab where we would be role-playing the first day of school. Not entirely sure why that lab felt so intimidating... I felt after reviewing last week's video recording that I was getting better at controlling my nerves while in front of the group and I felt fairly good about my lesson.

During this second lab we had to act out our "first day of school," covering our classroom expectations, procedures, and consequences along with presenting a welcome activity and our objectives for the day. This lab was also where we learned that for all of our labs starting that day on we would be playing specific student roles as our peers were teaching, to practice our classroom management skills. The roles included the over-sharing student, the teacher's pet, the chatty Cathy, the whiny/complaining student, the "techie," and the "know-it-all."

Unfortunately no matter how good I feel before I take over, as soon as I reach that "teacher" role the nerves come back, something I'm still struggling to overcome... The nerves, and what they cause are what I am dreading the most about beginning student teaching.

For my class, my scenario was that this was the first day of my upperclass Veterinary Science course, where I would be starting with my introduction to veterinary science sanitation and safety unit. I felt pretty good as I greeted my students at the door, cheerily welcoming all of them to class and directing them to the bell-work directions which were written on the board, directing the students to pick a numbered piece of paper from the front table, finding their partner with the same number and then sitting together. Once all my students were in the class I repeated the bell-work directions and transitioned into my welcome activity and interest approach for the day's lesson: the numbered pieces of paper the students had chosen were scenarios related to safety in veterinary-related situations. In their groups the students talked through their scenarios, discussing why and/or how safety was a concern in the scenarios and what could be done immediately to address the safety concerns. The students then presented their decisions to the class while also introducing themselves and why they were enrolled in the class (it's an elective).

I felt pretty good about the scenario activity, all the students understood that the common theme amongst the scenarios was safety, though with only two scenarios I don't think it was too hard to pick up so I know that I will have to be careful to ramp up the creativity when I have to write enough scenarios for a full class while also being careful to not create scenarios that are too obscure.

While I felt good about the activity while it was happening I realized a few things that needed to change: 1) I do not have neat board writing so I will have to either have my directions and objectives presented on a powerpoint or I will have to give myself extra time to write on the board, and 2) unfortunately, I could also start to feel my nerves bubble up again as I was teaching and when my nerves take over I tend to talk fast and my instructions lose their clarity.

Transitioning from the interest activity, I moved into my first objective of covering what the students needed to know to be safe in my classroom before we could learn about veterinary safety - my classroom expectations, procedures, and consequences. Going over these classroom protocols was pretty straightforward but after watching some of my peers teach I think I should have had my students engage more in this process by asking them to give their thoughts/examples for my expectations instead of just telling my students what they were and then asking if they had questions. Some of my peers also had the idea of passing out contracts with these protocols that the students and their parents would have to sign, and while I do like that idea I'm not sure that I would always want to use that but if I use it for one course/grade I need to use it for all of them.

Keep Calm & Pretend It's On The Lesson Plan

Finally, after reviewing my video recording and my peers' feedback the one constant critique I need to work on is my confidence in the classroom. Like I noticed earlier in the class my nerves can quickly get the best of me, and unfortunately the part of my lesson where my confidence visibly dipped the most was when I was reviewing my consequences with my students, which is when I should be the most in control of my classroom if I don't want my students to run right over me.

Overall, I think the lesson went well but can always be improved and I think my main take-away from these teaching labs is to use them as confidence builders so that when I am in my classroom I feel confident and can take charge of my classroom. Until then I run the risk of being the teacher who is "nice" but has no "oomph" or excitement to her, when I need to be the teacher who's classroom the students can't wait to arrive to and drag their way out.




Here's to the next lab and more confidence!

Good advice for anyone. Would like to hang in classroom

Who is Amanda Leigh Forstater? Brown Bag Edition

In class this past week we started a series of activities called Multicultural Moments, various activities to help us understand how and why all kinds of diversity are important in our classrooms (and our lives), and to begin we had to pick words and/or phrases which describe ourselves and then talk with one another to learn about each other.

Now to take it one step further, our cohort is completing this Brown Bag scenario, where we can only choose three things to put into a (virtual) brown bag to give to someone else to explain who we are and so we are posting pictures of those things and an explanation of why we chose them and then writing about why it's important to do this activity to get to know our cohort. Hope you enjoy my answers, I'm enjoying reading my cohort's. Hopefully they post theirs on their blogs as well.

#MulticulturalMoment Brown Bag Edition:

Who is Amanda Leigh Forstater?

If I could only put three things into a bag to give to someone else to explain who I am this is what I would choose:

Showing my first market animal in my first FFA jacket

1. My FFA Jacket

My FFA Jacket is one of my most prized possessions and for me it symbolizes my roots in agriculture and where I come from. One of the traits that most people say I most have is loyalty and that jacket symbolizes where a lot of my loyalty lies - with the Philadelphia FFA Chapter and all the people who have influenced me and my family through that organization. For me that jacket symbolizes my connection to Saul, and my connection to agriculture, and knowing that I can help put similar jackets on future students keeps me motivated to keep on keepin' on.

Teddy, my old friend who took me to prom

2. A picture of my (sort of) horses

While my FFA jacket symbolizes my roots in agriculture, horses were my first passion and what really set me on my path into agriculture. I've loved horses for as long as I can remember and have the elementary school stories, poems, and drawings to prove it. While I have never actually owned my own horse (yet!), I have been fortunate enough in having access to several great ones, first through Saul's herd and then more personally with the lovely drafts giving tours in Historic Philadelphia. I've been lucky enough to be able to call over 30 different horses my dear friends over the past almost ten years and they've opened me up to a wonderful part of my city I had almost forgotten. I can't wait to one day own my own horses but these carriage horses will always hold a special place in my heart.









3. A picture of my family (extended version)

Just some of my extended family

I have a different definition of family than some people. Most people define family by blood or marriage but I define family as the people (and animals) who love and care about you and those who you also love and care about. I've been lucky to have a lot of people I consider part of my extended family, but it starts with my parents, my sisters, and my Mom-mom and Pop-pop. These are the people who have raised me (or been raised with me) and I know that while we fight we love each other. I also include my four-legged family members because I've been lucky to have many animals play a part in my life and especially the five wonderful dogs I was lucky enough to grow up with. And finally I have had lots of friends and mentors I've considered family members and the bulk of them have come from Saul and my fraternal family, Alpha Zeta.






So that is what I would put in a brown bag to describe myself, though I know that if I could choose more than three items there would be plenty more ways I could explain.

Why is it important to share these "Brown Bags" with each other?

Because we need to know each other. Some of us know each other better than others, some of us have known each since high school (or earlier), but no matter how well we already knew each other, we need to get to know all of us on a deeper level if we're going to get through this year (and beyond) together. A flock is not just a group of random geese flying all together at once - a flock is a group of tight-knit geese who are there for one another in times of need, and who keep in flight with one another and they can only do that because they all know how each other fly and how they fall, what will motivate each other, and what will take the wind right out of their feathers.

Yes, a flock works together towards a common goal just like our cohort is working towards surviving this next year. But a flock is also working together to keep the flight moving forward, both on this season's journey and next season's, and I think that's how a cohort works together - we work together to get through this year and to transition into the PA Ag Ed family and the National Ag Ed family, keeping each other flying forward towards our goals beyond May.

That's why I think it's important to really get to know each other, because our influence on each other will go beyond May, even if we join other flocks.