Reading Reflection: Effective sses of my time through field trips, questions and cooperative learning

As I was going through the reading this week I was reminded of the "do not reinvent the wheel" phrase. By completing the readings I learned about the best ways to plan a field trip so all those involved are satisfied, the ways that cooperative learning is beneficial and how to correctly ask questions in class to get the desired results. I am sure that through teaching I would eventually reach the conclusions that I have just read about, but that would have taken so much time. By reading the stories I will be able to jump into student teaching a little more prepared than if I was just figuring everything out for myself.


From Myers and the "Effective Use of Field Trips" I learned the three steps to making sure a field trip runs smoothly: pre-trip planning, trip and post trip. By working out the logistics and talking to administration and parents in the pre-trip planning, it will make it run smoother. I will also tell them what I expect the students to get out of the trip. During the trip, I will provide students with an agenda and objectives -- this will decrease students frustration and maximize student learning. To bring the experience full circle I will discuss the field trip in the post phase of planning. This will allow students to analyze their experience during the field trip. As an agricultural educator, field trips are very important to allow the student to see that what they are learning in class, will be beneficial to them in the long run. It is also a good way to provide real life experiences in a classroom.


Cooperative learning is very beneficial to classrooms at appropriate times. By having the students work together and having to explain information to each other it increases understanding. Cooperative learning also works on life skills such as listening to others, taking turns, contributing ideas, explaining oneself clearly and encouraging others. These all sound like skills that students should have learned in elementary school, but it is always a good idea to drive those skills home. These skills are what employers are going to be looking for.

Cooperative Learning
 http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/staffdev/mcdonald_j/downloads/21st/comm/BenefitsOfCL/OverviewOfCoopLrng_Benefits.html 

There are many ways teachers can ask a question, but the key to success is doing it effectively. There are many different paths a teacher could go down, specific vs broad contents, asked to the general crowd or a direct person at a low or high cognitive level. I thought it was interesting that the reading suggested to not develop patterns while asking questions because then students will catch on and only listen when they think that they are going to have a question directed at them. By switching it up it makes the students have to pay attention at all times because they do not know when they will get called on. Questions are a good way to check for student comprehension as well. By watching to see how many people raise their hands to answer certain questions, it shows the teacher what they need to spend more time on and maybe even revert back to subject matter already taught. It is always important to work at the students pace, because that is the whole point of school -- for students to learn. I can check comprehension as well if a students gives an answer that skims the surface, I can probe them to make them think more deeply about the question and maybe come up with a better answer. I need to watch my class to see their facial expressions, to learn about their thoughts and opinions on the lesson. If they look confused, I will have to clarify, if they look bored, I will have to try to be more exciting. It is about the students, and I need to fix my class in a way that it maximizes student potential.

Interest Approach

Wednesday I woke up not feeling my best, stuffy nose and head, hot and cold, but I knew that I had to go to school to present my lesson to the class. I am sure this will not be the last time I will feel this way and still have to "go to work". It is something that all teachers go through and I witnessed it earlier this week when I went to observe ESL students at State High. On Tuesday, the teacher apologized to her students that she could not project her voice as well because she had a cold.. I didn't realize she was feeling poorly until she said that. Teachers will become the best of 'fake it until you make it'. This is something that I am sure I will accomplish along my career.

The reason for the first paragraph was because I was a little lack luster during my interest approach. I could have been more upbeat which would have made the students more upbeat. As told to me earlier in the week, lab is a place to see if my interest approach works or not. After having presented mine, I feel that it is more of an activity rather than an interest approach. I will probably change it for something else when I am teaching the agronomy unit in the spring.

After re-watching my video I realized that I only gave auditory instruction rather than pairing it with visual. I need to change this to make it easier for the students to learn in my classroom. Not everyone learns the same way, so I need to make sure that I am addressing as many modalities as possible. The part that I liked from my presentation is that I called on students that were more quiet and not offering answers from the get go. I believe it is important to get everyone involved in the lesson to maximize learning potential. 

Importance of the different ways of learning and different methods of teaching

During the second chapter of Newcomb's Methods of Teaching Agriculture, I learned about 16 principles of learning. A lot of those are applicable to every day life; success is a strong motivating force -- everyone wants to be successful and be good at something. People also like to know how and why something will be useful to them and why they should to take the time to get to learn it.

I was reminded of animal training with some of the later principles since it says that reinforcement must follow as soon as possible after the desired behavior so it is clearly connects with the behavior. This is the same for training horses and dogs. Since you cannot explain what behavior you liked and didn't like, you have to reward them as soon as they do something well so they will associate that behavior with something good. Same goes for punishment, if they do something wrong and you wait 20 min to say "bad dog" the animal will be confused and learning will not occur.

It was interesting to read that learning is most likely to be used if it is learned in a situation similar to the one it will be used in. This makes a lot of sense and may be why people can be really bad at math or theories since they don't apply them to the real world. This is why agricultural education is different from other subjects as it applies the information learned into real life situations.

While chapter two talks about how students learn, chapter 6 talks about teaching techniques that teachers could use. Examples being, planning lectures, four different types of discussion, demonstrations, field trips, role-play, and using a resource person. It talked a lot about how especially when using demonstrations, the students have to be given time to practice something to actually understand it. It is important that they get the time to do that or else that teaching technique will not be effective.

Lectures are also sometimes used to "fill" time which is not a good way to use it at all. Lectures should be organized well and have concrete planning to actually teach the students something.

http://www.learningsuccess.com/memory_principles_total_success.htm

Learning doesn't work how it is depicted in the picture, students cannot just sit in class while we attempt to shove knowledge into them. We have to use the different principals of learning and teaching to really make the students comprehend and be able to apply the information.

First Day of School Lab with Policies and Expectations

This past Wednesday I completed my first lab as a teacher. I told the class my classroom expectations and and policies that they would face in the class. I also used the time to do an ice breaker with the class so they would get to know each other better.

I thought that my "students" were rather nice to me during the practice but I was told in my reviews that I got kind of wide eyed when they asked me questions. I also went a little too fast and maybe did not seem sure of myself at times. I am sure that I will get more confident as time goes on and I get more experience.

I need to take the experience from Wednesday and use it in other lab sessions and when teaching. I need to be more confident in my answers to students and be better prepared with the material that I am teaching. When Caleb asked me what class I was teaching, I didn't have an answer right away. Students will deem me as creditable if I can answer questions correctly. If I do not know what I am talking about, then they will not listen to me and will completely ignore me.


Until next time,

Jeanne

Objectively Writing Objectives

As a teacher it is easy to think of cool and awesome activities that you want to do in your classroom. If you just jump into the classroom without any planning or objectives that you want to accomplish, it is most likely going to be a disaster ending with lots of frustrated students, a frustrated teacher, and no learning occurring.

http://teachers.redclay.k12.de.us/Judith.Conway/WriteEdObj.htm Write real objectives. Make your class meaningful! Don't just throw a dart and hope for the best while lesson planning!

Unit objectives give classrooms and teachers a purpose. They act as a guideline for students and they show administrative individuals what the students will be learning and how it will be measured.

Objectives are very important because by just adding or taking away simple words, it completely changes the cognitive meaning of the objective. An example being, to list something vs explaining something that was just learned. It is much easier to list something rather than explain it since it mostly deals with memorization.

http://tech2040.pbworks.com/w/page/38193573/ABCD%20Objectives, DON'T WRITE OBJECTIVES THAT USE VAGUE VERBS. This link will bring you to a wonderful page where you can learn more about writing objectives. 

When writing unit objectives they have to go along with the different domains of learning: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Cognitive deals with facts, knowledge, information and concepts.This would be to relay information back to the teacher through lists, paraphrasing, and explaining. Psychomotor deals with including both mind and motor skills at the same time and has a lot of hands-on components. Affective is the hardest objective to write since it is the hardest to measure, as it deals with attitudes, values, aesthetics and appreciation (Newcomb).

In the chapter, Planning for Instruction, it suggests the following steps when writing objectives.

1. Figure out the behavior that you want to be demonstrated/ measured
2. The conditions under which the behavior is to occur
3. The criteria by which the performance is judged (measured)

These steps make writing objectives more organized. They allow for creating the behavior but then actually figuring out a way to measure the behavior and control how/when the behavior is to occur. 

 It is vital for teachers to write objectives to keep the classroom flowing smoothly and for learning to occur. Learning will occur best in a low stress environment when the teacher and students are both aware of their duties and their means of accomplishing those duties.

http://fcit.usf.edu/assessment/basic/basicb.html, Base your objectives based on what behavior, conditions and criterion you want!

First Day Teaching Strategies

Perusing through the assigned reading for one of my Agricultural Education classes this semester, I read a lot about different aspects of teaching and different stages that teachers go though as they start their career, such as in the book the Effective Teacher  by Wong. According to the book, you do not even reach 'teacher' stage until you have made it to the final stage of IMPACT. In this stage the teacher makes a different in the lives of students and they " know how to open the door and invite their students to learn." This is the stage that every single teacher should strive for. If they don't try to make learning worthwhile, what is the point of teaching?

Another quote that I enjoyed from the book was "the biggest secret to teaching success - beg,borrow and steal". I liked this quote because it goes along with a commonly mentioned phrase in the Pennsylvania Agricultural Education community of "don't invent the wheel twice". I feel that the AGED community in Pennsylvania is essentially a big family, meaning teachers always try to help each other out. When there is an issue where a teacher needs a lesson plan or other resource for a subject, he or she can simply ask a colleague and will receive what they need. That is a wonderful thing to watch and also something I hope to experience in the future. 

Understanding by Design Framework, written by Jay Mctigne and Grant Wiggins, reinforced the idea that the lessons future students will learn in my classroom will be applicable to not only other classes but also in many other aspects of their life. In my advanced biology class in high school, we had to participate in a debate concerning a controversial biology topic. Afterwards, my teacher commended my speaking skills, which I credit to spending years involved in agricultural education classes and FFA. Without these critical experiences, I would still be extremely shy and unable to speak in front of others. Based on the importance of these experiences in my life, I want my students to have the same opportunities to expand their agricultural horizons and grow as a person. 

In class and in the reading Enhancing Student Learning Through Teacher Behavior by Garton, Miller and Torres, we also learned about the five behaviors that a teacher should possess, which are clarity, variability, enthusiasm, task oriented and/or business like behavior, and student opportunity to learn criterion material. Each behavior is extremely important to form the teacher-student bond necessary for success in the classroom.

I believe that if I include all that I have learned though class discussions and readings, the first day of my teaching career will be successful overall. I will survive. My goal is to make it to the final teaching stage of impact where I become a 'real' teacher. I want my students to be able to use what they learn in my classroom everywhere they go and I want to possess all the behaviors that a good teacher should have. These are my goals and I am going to work to reach them!

I found this picture on tumbler and thought that I would share it. See, in reality the teacher survives!

Last First Day of School as an Undergraduate

The first week of being back in State College is coming to an end. Being a student in the College of Agricultural Science I got the pleasure of attending 8 am classes to get me pumped up for the rest of the semester. Thankfully, they did just that.


I mentioned earlier in the week at the Penn State Ag Ed ROARS blog about how it can be scary to think of life outside of being a student. I still agree with what I said, but I don't think I have ever been more excited for school as well. In the classes I am taking I am learning about things that will actually affect me in the future. We, the 2014 spring student teachers, had to complete a mock school board meeting with our programs FFA and SAE programs on the line. Hopefully we will never have to actually be in that situation but it was good to put us on the spot and see how we react to different questions. Some were really hard to answer because we do not know necessarily all the logistics behind why things happen in the realm of education. The mock school board interview just showed us how much we have yet to learn this semester. I am just excited that all the information will be helpful in recent years to come as we start our own programs or get jobs.

Picture of Old Main I took this summer

This week it would be easy to become over whelmed with all the information that we have been getting and descriptions of assignments due. However, I firmly believe with a level head, and organization that we can still come out running this semester and make it the best semester possible.


                                                                     Jeanne Case
                                                                   Student Blogger
                                                                      #psuaged14
                                                  Dover Area High School Student Teacher