Who Killed Tony Turnip?

Let's Inquire: Inquiry Lab Reflection

 

 

This is hands down one of my favorite types of teaching styles. It truly helps me push myself to make sure that learning is occuring for the students. During National Convention I was accepted in the Pre-Service Teachers workshop and we discussed effective ways of executing this teaching method. I was very happy to be able to do one of our lessons we were taught into the lab.

In Lab I assigned them "Who killed Tony Turnip?". This assigment gave the students a scenario in which they had to dissect two flowers use dichotomous key on plant identification to solve Tony Turnip's murder. I did something similar to this in the workshop that I attended and really enjoyed it. My students enjoyed it and questions were kept to a minimum, which in fact was really nice. However when we got to the end were they were decideding on which flower was used to kill him they got a bit confused. What should of happened was only one flower should have been on the key to exclude the other flower out, however since they were both on there it was difficult fo the students to comprehend what to do in that situation.
The students were good sports until a little confusion got in their way then it went downhill, almost like they gave up. I realized through this that I need to make sure to go over all of my materials before I give them to the students to prevent this from happening in the future. Also my questioning for the students needs to be worked on. when I say questioning I mean guiding them where you want them to go, so they can achieve success. Also it helps the student understand what they are suppose to learn wihtout help from a teacher.
Overall I believe that this lab was a great one with lots of information for the studetns benefit. Especially with all the new ideas from my peer's lab and I will definitely be utilzing inquiry-based instruction in my future classroom. I like how this instructions is geared fort the students to learn and do it by themselves. This helps the students develop themselves in a great way and portray independence.There are definitely areas in which I could improve as an educator,so I can better use and understand this type of instruction.  



A Time To Reflect: National FFA Convention

From State College, Pennsylvania to Louisville, Kentucky: National FFA Convention

 

Hours upon Hours of driving seems impossible, but many agriculture teachers they pack up thier kids in the the school van and take them to the National FFA Convention

held in Louisville, Kentucky. A journey made up of many fun-filled memories with the kids you call your FFA family. As well as making new connections with your fellow FFA members from all around the nation.

I was able to have a different perspective of this journey. I no longer had the student perspective of FFA in general I was know in the teacher/advisor position. To me, my eyes were more open to our actual surroundings and watching people's interactions with students and/or with other teachers or vendors. I must say one thing about this organization we have, it is amoung one of the best organizations a child could be in. I wish that every student could have a chance to be apart of this organization.

One thing that really broke my heart, was seeing some students whose jackets were old and starting to tear. It made me realize how lucky I was to be able to have a new jacket when I was in high school. Seeing these students showed me that this is probably a treat for them and that they probably had to work very hard in order to enjoy this experience.

I feel like the organization is not about putting pople who are different behind you or put them down, but more so bring them up by including everyone. I believe the students were so amazed to see people that were from different backgrounds, diversities, and states that they wanted to meet them. For instance, one girl came up to the photo booth and asked if we see people from the Virgin Islands because she was going around and getting pictures with someone from a different state so she could present these pictures to her school board when they got back from the trip. One that is such a great idea to have your students do, but second that really shows the meaning of what this convention is. It is not about the competitions but the interactions and friendships that are made along the way! I can honestly say that I couldn't of been happier to see the real meaning from both the students and advisor point of view.

Inquiry Based Instruction

Weekly Writing #9

This week is the perfect week to start discussing inquiry based learning because this past week two of my other classmates and I had the opportunity to go participate in a Pre-Service teacher workshop that was based on inquiry based instruction at National FFA Convention. We went through and discussed what inquiry-based instruction was and how to implement it into the classroom. Inquiry starts off with a question that is posed and in order to answer the question you use the scientific method to figure it out what the answer would be. Its great because it really gets your students to use a higher cognitive ability skills to figure out the answer to the question. However in order to make sure you are getting this type of teaching instruction you have to make sure that you are implementing and following the six steps of inquiry based instruction. The six steps of inquiry based instruction is: posing a question, investigating, using evidence to describe, explain, and predict possible solutions, connecting evidence to prior obtained knowledge, and lastly sharing your results. Also there are six steps in how to implement inquiry into the classroom they are the following: starting the inquiry process, promoting student dialog, transitioning between small groups and class discussions, clarifying misconceptions and developing student's understanding of the content, modeling the scientific process, and lastly utilizing student experiences to create new content knowledge. By following these steps and procedure you  as a teacher can implement inquiry into your classroom.
I have learned that inquiry based instruction is geared more towards student centered classes. It is important that you as the instructor are there as a guide to make sure the students are staying on track. Also by implementing this method you are making the students more accountable for staying on top of the work so that the process can continue on. There are many different ways or lessons you can use this type of instruction in. For example, Labs are the most commonly used ways of inquiry-based instruction.
I plan to implement this method into my classroom because it not only promotes organization for you as the teacher but the student as well by organizing their thoughts. In this workshop we learned about the use of notebooks in your class for labs especially. This was great because you could write down your findings in a certain lab and take notes so that your thoughts are more organized and make sense for you to go back and review. I really liked how they should and talked to us about the different lessons you could use for each part we did in the workshop. To show us how to utilize the notebooks with a lab we did the experiment of " Are Double stuf' Oreos Really Doubled Stuffed?". We reported our findings and came up with the conclusions that they are in fact double stuffed.  However I do not want to give to much out because on Monday in my methods class, my other classmates and I will be putting on a 40 minute presentation about what we learned.
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Problem-Solving Approach Lab Reflection

Let's Talk About Chickens!

I really enjoyed this lab a lot because you can incorporate the problem-solving approach in almost every one of your classes that you teach and helps the student get "involved" in the class. However with this being the first time that we get to experience this type of teaching/learning there are definitely some areas that need improvement.
This is an teaching strategy where  teachers can really get our creative side out and explore new areas of learning for their students.  So for this lab, I did my lesson on the introduction to poultry. In my animal science class in the spring I will be teaching a unit on poultry and during this unit we will be able to hatch baby chicks. So before we get into the meat and hatching of the class we must cover the basics. This included knowing the anatomy of a chicken. So to lead my students in this direction I presented them with a problem. This problem included me telling them that I went to this little festival and while I was walking I stumbled upon the United Egg Production Booth (which is a highly known company that produces most of the United States eggs) and started to talk to a gentleman running the booth. While getting to know this man he found out I was an Ag teacher and presented me with a problem to give to my class about his laying chickens are losing weight, bones breaking, and they are laying eggs  but breaking them open. I had the students do a Think, Pair, Share, so I gave the students the scenario and had them fill out a worksheet which they had to write what they already knew and what they need to know by themselves then they would get into groups and discuss what they need to know. I would direct them towards chicken anatomy by using effective questioning. Also with this technique I would be able to get a feel for what they are looking at learning about.
Overall by doing this portion of my lesson plan I figured out what I need to improve on to make my teaching more effective. One of these areas of improvement is that I need to be more confident in the content of lesson and way that I teach it. I need to make sure that I am comfortable with the content and knowing how I am going to get this information across to the students so that they understand what is expected from them and what they need to know in order to proceed through the unit. One way to improve this would to establish good questioning skills so I can better direct the student's thinking to where I would like them to dig deeper. This is another area of improvement  to work on because effective questioning is important especially when you want your students to have higher levels of thinking.  Execution of lesson entails these two areas that need improved and once these areas are better presented whatever lesson I teach will be better understood by the students.
I will definitely be using this approach when I teach in the spring and for when I begin my career because it does present your students with a problem and makes them use their cognitive skills to figure out how to solve the problem.