Weekly Writing! Cooperative learning, field trips, and questioning!

Let's review the questions-based article - effective questioning techniques reflect the appropriate level of learning. This makes sense, right? Well, you would think so, but I am sure we have all had the incorrect question given a different level of learning or we have asked ridiculous questions to gauge understanding of others. I think it all lies in the context and the students' level of understanding. I love that we again come back to Bloom's taxonomy... He's just a rockin guy and developed this great way to clearly lay out how our minds work - WE ARE TEACHERS, let's use this as a way to develop the BEST LEARNING EXPERIENCE EVER! So let's not ever forget Bloom's... especially when developing questions.

Cool way to look at Bloom's revised taxonomy.

What else has to do with questioning? Open vs. closed questions. In ag, you may think we usually ask closed questions, but it is so important to include open questions - especially since we know (from this article) that both open and closed questions may be used at any level of Bloom's. 
It's important to know HOW to ask questions and what to do with them. Although I love talking to students and just sharing my knowledge, I have learned from leading a Bible study over the past year or so that ASKING questions is so important to gauge understanding and allow students to share what they've learned. It also allows for the most internal processing and, hopefully, cognitive processing to move up the Bloom's ladder (depending on question structure).
So one of this week's readings had to do with cooperative learning strategies (and were from UF!), something that I really enjoy... mostly because of my extrovertedness (take the Myers-Briggs test!).
Cooperative learning = group work? Well, here are some benefits of "cooperative learning," whether or not it's the same as group work: 1. Allowing different level learners to explain the material to each other (orally), 2. higher-order thinking, 3. controversy and clarified thoughts, 4. learning how to cooperate with different people! I think its interesting that the authors, Groseta and Myers, identify groups of 4 as ideal, but I suppose it makes sense. CDE teams are in groups of 4!
Constant monitoring is also important, not to mention keeping on topic and making sure groups are heterogeneous in terms of student levels. Here is how NOT to manage cooperative learning...

Finally... FIELD TRIPS! Who would have thought they had 3 parts?! Pre-trip, trip, and post-trip. Makes sense, especially with the concept of maximizing instructional time. I would have never thought that anxiety is such a concern on field trips? Maybe not ag field trips? It was an interesting claim but one that I will definitely consider as I attempt to plan some trips for practical student experience and out-of-classroom instructional time!

Lab 2 - Interest approaches!

The name has it right... this lab certainly was INTERESTING! Interest approaches are probably one of my favorite teaching tools and one of the most important to getting a lesson started strong and raising the bar for the students' learning experience for each day.
So for our interest approaches, which will not always be as elaborate or hands-on as the lab demos, we got to realize how they can spark interest and get us "set" for the lesson. For my interest approach, I kept to my wildlife unit and was continuing with the lesson for mammal identification. The interest approach was simple and can be very versatile - the students got to get their hands on some plaster molds of some common PA mammal tracks. They were asked to identify distinguishing characteristics of the track and then compare it to their neighbors' track. Then we tried to identify the mammals - a perfect way to lead into the objective of properly identifying 35 PA mammals using various distinctive traits.
Some of the difficulties with this lab were, again, classroom management - but I think I was able to get a handle on the students a little better by distracting Annette, sneakily taking Kate's phone, and addressing concerns with directions for the confused others. Also, to deal with sleepy students, we can get them super engaged in the interest approach by waking them up to a crazy/novel object or having them answer questions about it.
I definitely appreciated seeing some unique interest approaches and how my cohort-mates linked them to their lesson. I would have liked to see a bit more of the lesson content to see how it really could be tied in, but for time purposes, that would be difficult. However, I am excited to get into more lesson opportunities! I am just still struggling to believe that its already Thursday night and that we are coming to the 1/3 mark in the FINAL SEMESTER OF OUR COLLEGE CLASS EXPERIENCE! #crazy
Shout out to NATIONAL TEACH AG DAY!!! #taglive13 #hashtag

First teaching lab = First day of school

So in AEE 412 Lab on Wednesday, we had quite a variety of "first day of school" lessons. Personally, I really enjoyed seeing other people's introductory methods, classroom management expectations (and how they were shared), as well as how people handled classroom management issues.

For my intro lesson, we were entering (on our first day of school) the wildlife unit of a natural resources class. While this may not always happen on the first day of school, I was thankful for the chance to practice at least the interest approach of an ACTUAL unit I will be teaching in the spring!

So here's how it happened:
~everyone came in (shaking hands with the teacher) to the sound of some pump up music
~bell work (intro questions) was done individually
~students were asked to share their interest in the class
~we led into classroom management - expectations, procedures, and consequences
~given time, would have played our name game
~jumped into the "draw any wildlife" interest approach to the new unit

This was all wonderful practice for 1) teaching the unit in the spring, 2) planning out an engaging and memorable first (exciting) day of class, 3) learning how to manage student problems (i.e. Annette... see below).

I learned that, from the difficulties some of my "role playing" students gave me, I should always be prepared to address individual student needs/issues and I should know my students' backgrounds before getting in front of the class (I didn't look over the so wonderfully provided "role playing" chart, indicating the roles my "students" were playing). For example, Annette was asked to be the "likes to share" student and was very much open and talkative (something Todd later told me fits my personality well.. so you would think I would know how to handle it!) and somewhat distracting from the lesson. So, next time I will funnel her sharing energy to helping other students who may need it or being active in the lesson (i.e. my board writer) so she is more engaged and less able to distract the class.

Additionally, I was not that comfortable with my transitions, so I realized I should consider those a bit more when planning a lesson.

A general concept I learned is that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER and my fellow student teachers had great ideas that I will definitely use in my planning :) Some ideas were - Emily's fill in the blank classroom management policy sheet with a contract/signature at the bottom! Great accountability for the students!!

Thanks guys!! Let's keep the ball moving and the wood pile growing! Excited for next week's lab!!

Weekly Writing #2! Objectives

So this week we got to read about writing objectives - something I needed a refresher in.
I got some good background back in the day with Dr. Ewing in AEE 100 but needed a little more content, especially since we going to be writing many objectives coming up soon!!!
While I had the chance to discuss some interesting concepts about objective writing with Dr. Foster as we drove up to Massachusetts for the Big E (see video below), I was more interested in the paired/new vocab in ag ed for Bloom's taxonomy terms.

First, let's reflect on Bloom's taxonomy... for my own sake. (new terms - easier to understand* level 2)
Bloom's taxonomy reflects levels of cognitive domain processing in the learning process.
1 (lowest level) = remembering
2 = understanding
3 = applying
4 = analyzing
5 = evaluating
6 = creating

NOW, the simplified version of Bloom's, as identifeid by Newcomb and Trefz wtih David Krathwohl:
1. remembering
2. processing
3. creating
4. evaluating

I find these to be simpler to understand, but interesting in that, they now are flipped with the new Blooms taxonomy... bringing evaluation as a higher-order cognitive power than creation. Something I hope to discuss in class sometime, as I cannot find much literature online about it! However, I did find this cool article on agricultural writing...

Regardless of differences in cognitive levels, LETS NOT FORGET THE 3 COMPONENTS of an OBJECTIVE!
1. Condition
2. Performance
3. Criteria!

In addition to Whittington's article, there was a reading from "Methods of Teaching Agriculture" that outlined objectives simply:
~what you want students to know
~help make decisions about sequence of instruction (knowledge/skill)

So there you have it, an outline of how I work best to plan things. Let's hope it sticks and more things come into play as we all jump into real life objective planning...

AEE 412 - first reading post!

Sometimes reading isn't that exciting, but as we are diving into the one semester that MATTERS THE MOST (not that the previous ones didn't matter) before student teaching and real-life teaching, some of these readings can be quite intriguing and beneficial!

Although I do not have the exciting book of "Methods of Teaching Agriculture" yet, I was able to read through the first section of "Strategies for Great Teaching" by Reardon and Derner, as well as paper on "Understanding by Design," a (semi-ancient) Ag Ed article (Garton, Torres) about Teacher Behavior, and the Wong article on being an effective teacher.

So what did I learn from these readings and how do they apply to the content in 412? Well, to be good ag teachers, we have to first be GOOD TEACHERS, right? Well not just GOOD, but EFFECTIVE. Wong hits on effective teaching as including:
1) positive expectations of students
2) good classroom management
3) knowing how to make student mastery lesson plans
4) works cooperatively and individually with students

Additionally, Wong points out the concept of an "Induction program" for student teaching - something that I would find very interesting when applied to the Ag Ed profession. What could we do to prepare ANY given teacher for that first day/week/year? An apprenticeship program would definitely work, and collaboration with other teachers before being in the classroom, but in Ag, we kind of have a different situation, especailly considering there are usually only one or two ag teachers at a school. Something to think about... Ag Ed Instructor Apprenticeship - has a nice ring to it.

So being an effective teacher also includes the concept of making sure there is actually LEARNING and UNDERSTANDING going on in your classroom, right? I like how White points this out consistently with the Understanding by Design model, something that Wong pointed out with the statement "the purpose of school is learning" - therefore we cannot just teach, we need to invoke learning.

This brought me back to the basics, with Bloom's taxonomy of learning - knowledge, comprehension, application, knowledge, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. We need to understand understanding before teaching something... makes sense right?

The White model of Understanding by Design closes this concept out with a good model for Learning GOALS and Teacher ROLES (roles in parenthesis)
1. Acquire (direct instruction)
2. Construct meaning (facilitative teaching)
3. Transfer (coaching)

Ag teachers have a big and already identified role in "coaching" and even more opportunity to do so with the 3-circle model of ag ed. Shouldn't that give us a foot up in the game?

Well then we get into E-moments. The in-class, bring-it-all-together activities that invoke understanding and create a positive learning environment. I am excited to learn more about these "engaging moments" and how we can specifically apply them in the ag classroom!!

Good readings, let's keep at it - reading develops competency and growth... not to mention UNDERSTANDING of how to help our students UNDERSTAND!!