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.

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

Cooperative Learning & Field Trips: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #4

So this past week has been crazy, we turned in our first lesson plan, our first unit plan, and our teaching lab was "our first day of school," and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking that there is going to need to be a steep learning curve between now and January. We're all fully experiencing the "Doing to Learn" aspect of agricultural education as we attempt to learn how to prepare lesson plans, unit plans, and objectives (oh my!) by writing our first drafts, a lot of us have agreed this fall is essentially trial by fire. I think one of the things that worries us the most is we know what we want our final products to look like - we know what the ideal classroom will look like and how it will run and we know that we want our students to always be learning and engaged; we want to use multiple modalities to reach the multiple intelligences of our students and challenge them to higher orders of thinking - but how do we do that all the time while increasing the variability in both our content and teaching methods?

Two of the ways we can do this, and two of the ways I'm now thinking are the hardest for teachers to implement is cooperative (group) learning and field trips. Based on our readings and past experiences in classes, I think we all know how field trips and group learning can go either really great or really bad - as a young student I loved trips to the Academy of Natural Sciences to learn more about biology and evolution (what kid doesn't love dinosaurs?) and I love working in groups where you can build off of each other's strengths. But I also know how annoying it can be as a student when everyone in the group does not pull their weight or when you go on a field trip and the guide's tour is putting you to sleep and you have no reason to stay engaged (no activity to complete, no quiz, etc.) What I am starting to learn is that the reason these strategies are used effectively in a classroom far and few between is because of the logistical nightmare these can become.

How do you decide which students to pair together? Do you assign roles or have the students choose? How big of a group is too big? (Readings suggest 2 or 4 students, allows for pairs) How do you keep students engaged during field trips? Do you have well planned activities/assignments pre-trip, during trip, and post-trip? Have you figured out all the logistics for planning a field trip? (Administration approval?)

These are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to what a teacher has to worry about when utilizing either of these two teaching techniques, but when used effectively they create great learning opportunities that fit well into the full three-circle model of agricultural education. For example, you are teaching a small gas engines course. In groups of four, you have students work through the processes of identifying the parts on a engine, disassembling and then reassembling the engine, and finally trouble-shooting the engine as a final assessment. Not only have your students worked well together because they were fully engaged in the project, you taught your students how to work together, how to solve a problem using critical thinking, and provide them with real world applications because if they were working in a mechanics shop they would probably not be working solo on a project (you may have also set yourself up with a great Small Engines CDE team for that extra outside the classroom enhancement).

Just make sure your classroom doesn't end up like this

That is just one great example of how cooperative learning can be used in an agriculture classroom and when used effectively it enhances your curriculum, not only teaching your content but enhancing the real world applications of your content and providing your students with opportunities to gain the interpersonal skills they need in their future careers.


Next example, you are teaching an environmental science course and are teaching about forestry and wildlife. You can only teach your students about the different kinds of plants or wildlife for so long through powerpoint lectures. A great field trip would be taking your students to the local environmental/nature center, town park, or even a well-kept section of woods (this may even be on school property). This could be a great field trip but if it just becomes a hike in the woods it will only be great for some students and may not result in the learning opportunities you want. But if you present students with the identification and basic information before the trip, provide them with detailed pictures of the location (maybe a virtual tour if possible), engage with a local wildlife agent/expert who can lead a tour of the area and present the desired engaging content, and then culminate the experience with a project the students present upon returning, engaging in reflection on the trip and presenting knowledge gained, you can create an amazing field trip experience.

Too often I think that teachers (all teachers, not necessary ag. teachers) forget that a field trip does not have to be a huge trip that requires buses to a big museum, it can be a hike to the pond behind the school or to the veterinary clinic in town, as long as the students are engaged and that there is connections between content and the experience before, during, and after the trip.

Field trips and cooperative learning can be great education additions to the classroom and I can't wait to experience my first trip with my Tri Valley students next month to the National FFA Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and hopefully to some different ones this upcoming spring. My upperclassmen will be going on a few short field trips to the forest land on the school property to learn about proper forest stewardship, incorporating service learning and some wildlife habitat construction and I can't wait to see how that turns out (successful hopefully).

To get the ball rolling on some ideas for field trips in your classroom, or if you're location bound and need to bring a field trip to you, I found a great link with resources for various virtual field trips for teachers: http://www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html

Get your kids in groups and start planning some happy, engaging field trips!

Reflective Teaching Lesson: AEE 412 Lab #1

For our first teaching lab this semester we had to conduct a Reflective Teaching Lesson, or RTL, with our students (our peers) on a random topics. These topics ranged from being skill specific to being abstract concepts, and my lesson topic was the Bowline Knot. I had to teach my students (my peers) how to tie the Bowline knot and their end of class assessment was to tie the knot and I would inspect their knot to see if they had done it correctly. I had never used this knot before preparing for this class so I had to learn how to tie it before I could teach them, and also find an interesting way to teach them since it is a fairly straightforward task to complete.

I started my lesson off by using Lassie as an interest approach, telling my students that when they entered the classroom they had fallen into a well and had called Lassie to bring help. I was their help and had brought rope to pull them out, but that they needed to tie the Bowline knot into their rope  in order to make it safe to pull them out. I showed the students a picture of the knot and its steps on a powerpoint at the front of the class and tied the know with them at the front of the class. I followed up by showing a video of tieing the knots, which I narrated because we did not have audio in our classroom, and then taught my students a story about a rabbit which described how to tie the knot step-by-step. After working with the students to tie the knot several times I told them to tie it one more time without my help, and once they felt ready I would assess their knots and determine if I could pull them out of the well; and everyone passed the test.

Overall, I think the lesson went well even though I had just learned the knot and was nervous, but I don't believe I appeared nervous according to the video recording (which makes me more relaxed for the future, especially since I am teaching several courses that I have very little background and/or experience in). Even though the lesson did go well I can always improve any lesson so below are the many positives and negatives I have about my Reflective Teaching Lesson:

Positives:

• Used the story about Lassie and the well for my interest approach
• Students seemed to enjoy it and find it realistic
• Students felt it was very clear that the goal was to tie a knot
• Students liked that multiple teaching techniques were utilized
• Picture diagrams, video tutorial, hands-on demonstration, and a story 
• Students appreciated the patience and individual attention
• Students appreciated the enthusiasm and positivity
• Students appreciated the hands-on topic and approach

Negatives:

• I did not account for technology difficulties
• No audio (though I was able to narrate video)
• What if the video/internet had not worked?
• I need to be clearer with direction, talk louder and clearer
• When watching the video playback I felt that I needed to talk clearer, have all my words/sentences thought out before I spoke (nerves get to me quickly)
• To avoid this, maybe script out the lesson to counteract nerves?
• Have extra string in case of knots
• Had some extra string but if every student had needed more I would not have had enough
• Have plan for if students get the concept faster 
• Need a challenge step so the lesson doesn't go stale
• But requires me to learn more challenging knots (material)
• Account for student placement in class and ability to see teacher
• Hard for Deanna to follow along at times since she was in back of room
• Try using a larger rope that is easier for students to see
• Maybe demonstrate in a better location in classroom, maybe to side of students

Student Engagement: 412 Weekly Writing #3

Professor: "What do we (agricultural educators) teach?" 
Pre-service Ag. Teachers: "Animal science, mechanics, plant science, food science, environmental science, leadership skills, communication skills, agribusiness, marketing, record-keeping, natural resources, agriscience, applied STEM, technical knowledge and skills...."
Professor: "Yes..but no that's wrong."
Pre-service Ag. Teachers: "......huh?......."
Professor: "All of the above is our content. But we teach Students..."

The above conversation is a paraphrase of how my cohort started one of our pre-service teaching classes this past week. The question was set-up to be a trick, and once we were told the correct answer we all realized where the focus of classes this week was moving towards. We all know that our main purpose is to educate students and make an impact on them, but sometimes now when we're bustling about trying to make sure we are ready for this next year, we run the risk of getting bogged down worrying about the content that we are teaching instead of who we are teaching.

Student engagement and motivation are key topics in the classroom. We could walk into our classrooms this spring with the best written lesson plans around, but if we don't engage our students, and we can hear crickets chirping in the background, we are going to have a problem (unless of course you have reptiles in your classroom who you are feeding crickets to, in which case in might be normal to hear crickets chirping). But the point is - if your students are not motivated to be in your classroom, and don't feel engaged, then they are not going to be engaged in your agricultural program, and there is no program without students. We (teachers) cannot make an impact on the future if our present students don't want to engage with us.


There are many ways to keep your students engaged and motivated in your classroom. Rewards systems, music, games, physical movement - these are all good ways that we can keep our students engaged and motivated, but a great quote I found explains it perfectly - "not every student learns the same way, the same day" (thanks Google!), and this is true! There are so many different types of learners and so many different types of learning - but no matter what way you learn, in order to reach all your learners you have to mix it up and add a little Variability every lesson to effectively teach. Worksheets and powerpoint lectures may be a great way to deliver content, but they are never the only way and they should always be used with another more engaging activity to complement it.

Interest approaches are the main way we gain and measure student engagement. These are activities, at the beginning of a class/lesson, which tie in a student's interest with the topic/content to be learned that day. For example, when teaching an environmental science class you may take your students on a short nature walk, in a food science class you may bring in a food for the students to eat. For me, horse references always pique my interest. In order to best find an interest approach that will engage your students you have to know two things: 1) what kind of learners are they, and 2) what are they interested in. The second point is probably the easiest one to find out - you have to care about your students and get to know them as people. It doesn't have to involve checking out their after school activities or attending their sports events (though it can, and a lot of ag. teachers are very involved in their students' lives), it can be as simple as listening to student conversations during breaks, or better yet, assign an open-ended assignment where students can write an essay or complete a project on a topic of their choosing and see what they interested in.

Students are always trying to tell their story, you just have to know when and how to listen...

My Multiple Intelligences Results

The first part is a little harder, learning what kind of learners your students are. With three modalities of learning (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), three domains of learning (cognitive, psychomotor, and affective), and multiple intelligences, it's hard to figure out especially since some learners may not even know how they learn best. To help figure this out there are many different online tests you and/or your students can take to determine your individual learning styles. A test my cohort and I took this past week determined our Multiples Intelligences, using the following link: www.bgfl.org/

Once you know what your students are interested in, and how they best learn, then you can plan the appropriate interest approaches and other activities to ensure that your classroom is filled with engaged and motivated students. There are many ways to do this and some ways include utilizing movement, summarizing strategies, cooperative learning techniques, and more. This link, and the picture to the right, show seven ways that have been found to increase student engagement in classrooms: www.readinghorizons.com/blog/seven-ways-to-increase-student-engagement-in-the-classroom


At the end of the day you have to remember that not only do your students have to be engaged and motivated in your classroom in order to learn, but you have to also remain and engaged and motivated to show up and give your best everyday, because you never know when might be the day that your students are going to get it. So always remember that no one is ever motivated to go into a classroom where they are bored, or where their teacher is bored, but if you stay engaged in your students' learning and in them, then they will stay engaged in your teaching and you.

Curriculum Planning & Design: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #2

This week starts the stressful topic of the semester....curriculum planning and design. All of us have a variety of teaching experiences - workshops, camps, programs, presentations, we all have some experience getting in front of people and delivering content. But probably the topic we've had the least experience with is actually creating and designing our own curriculum, whether it's lesson plans, unit plans or full courses of study. For me, the biggest stresser is how do I create unit and lesson plans that not only provide clear instruction and coverage of material, but that are also easily taught from and that have clear objectives without becoming just a list of activities.

The readings this week covered curriculum planning and design, from planning lesson and unit plans all the way up to planning an entire course of study for an agricultural education program. A technique discussed in the readings is "Backwards Design," something I have heard discussed in many of my education courses. Backwards Design focuses on starting with the end in mind - what do you want your students to gain from your courses, units, lessons, etc. and designing lessons and activities that progress students towards your learning objectives with clear assessments along the way. This seems pretty clear, I wouldn't just start telling a student how to do something without knowing what it is I want them to gain out of it at the end.

This is a concept that I think applies in any learning experience, not just in the formal classroom. As an example, when I'm working at my stable and teaching a new employee how to groom and harness a horse, I don't just start doing it and have them copy me. I explain to them at the beginning why each part is important - it's proper grooming and harnessing for the horse's health and safety, but also to improve business as a "spiffy" looking horse with shiny, clean harness will garner more business than a dirty horse. If I were to just tell the employee to groom and harness the horse without showing them how and without explaining the why, it's more likely that the job will not get done satisfactorily.

Backwards Design, I think is a fairly self-explanatory technique, but within all of our readings, sometimes it can get jumbled into the jargon of the various educational theories. One way I have found to better understand it is through charts and other graphical representations. In this document published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, they work through several templates for a specific social studies unit plan, showing how a unit plan would be developed with and without backwards design. Check out the document here: http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/books/mctighe2004_intro.pdf

In this age of continuing technology use in the classroom, I also looked up various curriculum design templates online. One website I found with several potentially useful apps is http://www.chalk.com/suite. This website has apps for lesson planning, attendance, and assessments. I also found this scholastic link http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/8-apps-lesson-planning-and-classroom-management which has a list of several apps useful for teachers. Maybe we'll find at least one useful app out of these links.

Happy curriculum designing!

What Makes a Good Teacher?: AEE 412 Weekly Writing #1

For this first week of the semester our topic was "What is Teaching and Learning?" and we discussed multiple times the question "What makes a good teacher?" I think this is a topic that a lot of us have thought about or discussed on our own many times because all of us want to be good teachers. All of us have known good teachers or at least have an idea in our heads what we would want a good teacher to be. Our readings focused on the characteristics of effective teachers identified by Rosenshine and Furst, most of which we included in our various discussions of effective teachers this past week. Some of the characteristics that stick out the most to me are clarity, enthusiasm, positive reinforcement, variability and student opportunities to learn.

These characteristics are important because they are ones that I believe have impacted me the most and I hope to utilize them to impact my students. Starting with variability - I think we have all had the teachers/professors whose classroom techniques never change, who sometimes seem just as bored as you are to be in their classroom. One of the simplest ways to incorporate variability into your teaching is to change how you present your information, whether that's power-points, writing on the board, Garton even suggests wearing a shirt relevant to your teaching topic. At first this may seem funny to you, but one of the most memorable lectures I've had was during the first week of my undergraduate environmental conservation course. My professor came into lecture in his suit and tie, just like every other professor; however, halfway through he ripped off his shirt and tie to show his tie-dyed t-shirt and proceeded to lecture (almost rant) about saving the environment and as he said "letting his inner-hippie out."

Now this set up his students to look forward to the variability in his course compared to our other classes, but while he continued to show enthusiasm for his topic throughout the semester that was the peak of variability. I think there are certain characteristics that are easier for agricultural educators to incorporate than other teachers - variability is one of the easiest because of the diverse topics we can cover in agriculture. However, I know that I will have to work on the variability of how I present my lessons, because I am someone who can use power-point as a safety net.

Clarity is extremely important in an agricultural education classroom because of the diversity of our topics. We joke with our peers and agriculture teachers that you (as the teacher) only have to be a day ahead of your students, which I think in simplest terms is true. However, clarity is something I am most afraid of not having when I walk into my classroom in the spring. The majority of the classes I'm teaching are machinery/shop related, topics I have very little background in and I'm sure I'm not the only one in the cohort who is at least a little worried. I think all of us will learn enough over the next couple months to be "one day ahead" of our students, but what happens when we encounter the student(s) who is(are) days ahead of their classmates. This is a fear I've had many people, including Mrs. Dingman, try to alleviate, but it will be the characteristic I will strive for the most no matter what.

The last characteristics I want to touch on are enthusiasm, positive reinforcement, and student opportunities to learn. Enthusiasm is a characteristic I think everyone in our cohort has, though I know for some of us it can be restrained by fear of failure. Positive reinforcement is a characteristic that will not only be important for us to have towards our students in the spring, but also towards each other this year - just like the geese from Dr. Foster's story we have to stick with each other and get ourselves through this stressful time. And finally another characteristic I think that is tailor-made for agricultural educators - providing student opportunities to learn. The first half of the FFA motto is "Learning to Do, Doing to Learn," and we all believe that the greatest strength of agricultural education is its hands-on, real-world applications, both in and out of the classroom.

One of the greatest things I think a teacher can do is to encourage their students to find and develop their own passions, to learn about what makes excited and curious, and to pursue their own learning because they want to. I was lucky in that I had many teachers, mostly at the secondary and post-secondary levels, who did all of the above and everytime they pushed a student to do this, they were providing them chances to learn and grow.

Now to close this first blog I want to include a video I found called "Great Life Lessons from Famous Teachers." I found this video over the weekend and while Mr. Brookfield, in our handout from Friday, stated that many of the famous fictional educators many of us have grown to know and love are bad role models for him, I think that many of them can still teach us great things about the art and science of great teaching.

I also found an interesting video series about real teachers, and one of the videos ties back to how we opened the class last week, discussing growth mindsets versus fixed mindsets. Check out the video "I Heart Teachers: Encouraging Growth Mindset."