For my interest approach I showed a video of a restaurant in New York City that is using hydroponics on their roof to provide their restaurant with vegetables for the majority of the year. I then went into the situation that our class was going to work on figuring out today. I said that they cafeteria staff had approached me saying that they need some fresh vegetables to serve to the students at lunch. With the big health kick and it costing a lot to bring fresh vegetables rather than frozen ones... they needed a change and asked me for help. I told the class that after finding the video that I just showed them that I bet that we could help the nice cafeteria staff out. We then went into a discussion of how we would be able to do this with hydroponics. Our discussion traveled from supplies that we need, vegetables to plant, marketing plans, permission from the principal, superintendent and school board. I felt that we had a lot written down and that the students were really thinking about the task at hand. However, I felt that I led the discussion too much. I asked too many leading questions rather than leaving it more open to interpretation for the students. I feel that it could have been more student led rather than teacher led. I had written in my lesson plan that I was going to have a student write what their peers were saying on the board but I didn't follow through with that. I believe in the real classroom that I will since there will be more students and I will probably have a fidgety student anyways.
My take away from my lab is to
1) Be exciting (especially if there are other factors getting students down)
2) Really know content knowledge ( I need to be more confident in myself and my teaching abilities and my knowledge)
3) Phrase questions in different ways to get different results ( more student interaction and thought rather than me leading them to the answer I am thinking of)
Keep being awesome and keep working on eating that elephant!
blogging out,
Jeanne
Jeanne,
ReplyDeleteI had a lot of the same take away messages as you this week! I really noticed how much better things could go if I was confident in my content knowledge. At this point, that really kind of scares me because we have such a short amount of time to try to prepare for all of the topics we are going to cover, but I think that as long as we put the time in do the research necessary before each lesson so that we are adequately prepared.
I also noticed that the energy level was down in our lab this week too, and your connection to the weather definitely makes sense. It normally takes our section a little bit to get our energy level awake since we start at 8, but there was no real point where we got very lively this week. You are right in saying that the teachers have to work extra hard to capture attention on those days. Looking back at my days in the classroom, I know that it has always been much easier to check out on days where I would have much rather been at home watching a movie listening to the rain hitting my roof! I think that this is something that we will learn to deal with better as we actually get practice out in the classroom!
Keep up the good work!
Hi Jeanne,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you had a great lesson, from your writing anyway. What was helpful to me in having structure in the discussion was knowing where I wanted them to go with it. Obviously you did to, but I mean, I wanted my students to come up with the lesson titles, and I had that written in my lesson plan so when they were getting away from those answers I knew to bring them back in and redirect them. As a developing teacher I'm sure you'll find what works for you and it sounds like you're on the right track. And I couldn't agree more, enthusiasm aligns with content knowledge!
Good connection to uncontrollable circumstances and the teacher's ability to CONTROL the classroom with their ENERGY!! I am glad you are getting better with your enthusiasm... I know you have it!! It just shows itself differently than... let's say... Daniel Foster...
ReplyDeleteBut anyways, I am glad YOUR lab went well! It sounds like your students were able to lay out your unit for you successfully, something that I don't feel like happened with me. But then again, you did seem more organized than me, even if you did facilitate too much. In the end, I think it is important that you get the concepts across to the students but that we are really trying to provoke a student-led lesson. It seems easy, but as we are all discovering, it really isn't!
Jeanne; first off great blog! I have no idea why I am just reading this now! I am really enjoying going back through and reading some of your posts, they are really funny! I am glad you had a decent lab this week! As for facilitating too much, that is going to come with time for us, I think that we sometimes facilitate too much because we get worried that if we don't things will die out and students will get off track. Trusting our students more will come when we actually get into the classroom and can observe their interactions with us. I think we also have to learn what types of questions are going to be best to get our students to keep thinking but is going to make it so we are not "guiding them too much." Keep up the awesome work! I can't wait to read more of your blog posts! :)
ReplyDeleteJeanne,
ReplyDeleteI never really gave much thought to this before, but the overall daily energy in the class varies day by day. I guess the only thing we can do is keep them moving, keep them thinking. I like your idea of having a student write on the board; however, if you are writing them on the board, you can rephrase them in a clear way. Or possibly you could verbally rephrase them while the student writes that on the board? Anyway, keep up the good work and it sounds like you're making progress with the enthusiasm factor :)
Hi Jeanne,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you know what you need to do and I like how you had a "pep talk" before the class started to try to get your self into the atmosphere that you wanted to create. I like the idea of having students write on the board, I think it would be a great way to keep students involved and paying attention (especially for that one that seems to zone out).
Jeanne.
ReplyDeleteIt is great that you did find some improvements in your lab. Your lesson sounded great and was really well planned out. I think we all know how bad a rainy dreary day can drag us down. You were 100% on with saying that as the teacher we need to figure out how to get that enthusiasm back. I agree that having students capture ideas on the board increases engagement and helps improve involvement. Keep up the good work!!
I think its really common for use to start a lesson with a ton of steam and then loose it at the end. it is not only important to have a fresh engaging lesson, but to be fresh and engaging ourselves. I think when we are cognitive of our demeanor we can better control our dispositions. I also think this comes with time so keep working at it! good luck
ReplyDeleteBeing in your class Jeanne, I really liked the set up of the lesson. It was really interesting to see that video before we started the discussion, so jolly good interest approach! I thought there needed to be more involvement from the student perspective, but you did do a very good job of creating numerous ideas and variables into our heads. This was a very applicable situation to us (as high school students) while also being something we could do at home if we really wanted.
ReplyDelete