The Quest for Good Questions

Sitting in class and listening to me go on and on about a topic is not as effective or fun for students or myself. As a teacher it is my job to engage students into the conversation that  are talking about in class. 

It is also my job to let them tell me what they want to learn about and adjust my content to their interests as best I can. After reading this week about creating good questions for students I still have some questions about questioning. 

 To my future students: 

Is it easier to share out an answer to a question after having talked with a peer?

To my cooperating teacher:

How long do you wait after asking a question to rephrase it or provide an answer if no one knows?

To my cohort: 

How would you use the strategy Hot-seating: A pupil is placed in the ‘hot-seat’ to take several questions from the class and teacher" in your class? This seems like a ton of fun but, can be nerve wracking for some students. 

You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies: Interest Approach Lab Relfection

Depending on the school students have between 4-8 class periods a day. A common struggle as an educator is how do we take students from the history or math class they might have just been sitting in for 45-80 minutes and engage them in our class? 

This week I got to demonstrate interest approaches in lab. This quick activity I did was a way to get students thinking about animal science and specifically on animal welfare. 

My interest approach was having students rotate to different stations and at that station students had to write down what animal made that product (adhesive, felt, leather and rubber) and how you can make it without an animal. 

When looking back on my lesson there were many thing I could have done better:

1.  Having the instructions on the board so everyone was clear on them.

2. Allowing more wait time when asking questions and rotating between students for answers to my questions.

3. Saying my objectives clearer when starting the lesson. Putting them in simple terms and not necessarily what was on my lesson plan. 

With the bad comes some good: 

1. I added music to the lesson while they were rotating around to the stations. 

2. Throughout the process (and the rest of the lesson) I never gave my opinion on animal welfare. I was letting them formulate their own opinion with good sources. 

3. I have them real life objects to look at and recreate instead of pictures of items. 

I am looking forwards to the next lab to try and correct some of my "opps" and be a better educator. 

First Time For First Days: First Days Of School Lesson

If I learned anything from my FFA advisor, Mrs.D, it was this: "Gagne, you only get one first impression. Go wow that judge with your speech and make him want to listen to you within the first 5 seconds!" This concept of first impressions has now rolled over into my future career as an educator.

Why is the first day so important? 

When the first day of school comes around you are giving your class that first impression of not only you but, your class too! The importance of setting the tone right on that first day will effect your classroom and classroom management for the rest of the year. Today I got to practice what my first day of teaching will be like!

What Was my lesson?

In the 10 minute window that I taught to my peers I did a classroom expectation activity. The students created expectations of themselves, their peers and of me.I wanted to provide ownership to the students since this was for a 9th or 10th grade Introduction to Agriculture class.

                   Reflecting on my lesson?

• Having students write their answer on sticky notes is a great tool but, make sure I write the answers on the board so everyone can see the notes once "posted" or do a gallery walk. 
• I should still have a list somewhere of what I think expectations and consequences should be either for reference or to suggest others that they might have missed. 
• Music while students work keeps the classroom alive and can help some students engage.

How do we balance students voices and maintain "order" in our classroom?

Group,Group, Hooray: Group Teaching Techniques

“Pick a group and get to work” are definitely the best words I can tell my class. When it comes down to planning my classroom I need to keep in mind that I’m teaching to that” large group” everyday and how to design that lesson to fit the group.

 My classroom is a team of students taking on the challenge of learning something new and I am the team leader planning the plays to shoot the goal and win the new knowledge.

Through the reading this week I took away some main ideas that I will take into the classroom with me next semester. 

Plan a lecture: Do not use a lecture as a way to waste time or get out of planning a lesson. Lectures take a lot of preparation to be successful. What I want to say and how I say it needs to be the same. Keeping students engaged during the lecture is another hot ticket item when planning a lecture.

 Field trips can help give the group the  real life experience. These trips can be to a local business and last the singular class period or be longer. Allowing students to have the real immersive experience helps them connect to the material. When I am instructing a group of kids I need to plan a trip that works for all of them and still provides and outlet for other learning styles as well.

Demonstrations: When I am demonstrations something for a class I need to plan why I am showing them this demonstration, what safety concerns are there and what I am going to say. Planning a demonstration with no talking does not help the group. I need to be able to talk through the steps as I go.

This weeks reading also connected to my previous classes:

Discussion has been used in several courses of mine but, in Practical Parliamentary Procedure used a ton of class discussion to deep dive into the content. By being able to bounce ideas off other classmates I gained more content knowledge through perspectives than any other class I’ve been in.

Demonstrations were used in my chemistry class pretty frequently. The one thing I remember about the demonstration on chemical reactions was “always do the demonstration before class starts to make sure you have everything.” This quote from my professor has stuck with me. He knew the lab but didn't practice before hand and it didn’t end up working. That is okay as an educator to make mistakes and be honest about it but, if I can avoid it though practice that would be ideal.

Before l can plan a lesson I need to have goals of what I want my students to know. This article comes from  Edglossary  and talks about forming good objectives for my class.

“When planning objectives how do we write criteria to determine in how we determine the outcome of the objective?”

Brining Our Differences Together: Planning for all Learners

"You are a genius and the world needs your contribution"- Seth Goten

This quote is important when we start to think about how we are designing our lessons and units as an educator.

Doing the same thing all the time does not help every student in the class have a fair chance to succeed and learn the material. Picking content based off what I enjoy teaching doesn't help my students be successful after their time in my class either.  So how do we take this vague content area and make it applicable to all students?

As I start to explore this concept of planning units and lessons based off  students in my class I have the following questions:

To my future students:

How do we want to share our new knowledge with others in and out of our class? How can we help show off what cool things we are doing?

To my mentor team:

How do we balance what our students have as interests and teaching that and the curriculum for an agricultural education program according to the Department of Education?

To my cooperating teacher:

When designing a unit what are some ways to gauge the students background knowledge in the content area to help me know what they know and do not know? 

Plan Smarter;Not Harder: Lesson Planning 101

Bylaws are a set of rules adopted by an organization to help their organization run smoothly and to keep them on track. Every profession ,including education, have some sort of "rules" that they adopt to help their profession function. 

The guide in education isn't a document with a bunch of sections on "how to do x,y and z" but, a lesson plan to provide structure to our classrooms and determine how to teach the content. 

This week we will deep dive into what makes a solid and functioning lesson plan and how they can help me be a better educator. The reading this week helped me create the following connections between where I will be student teaching and classes I have taken as to why I need a plan when I walk into my classroom and why winging it isn't an option.

3 Connections to Conrad Weiser Area High School: 

1. Asking thoughtful questions is not easy, but necessary to help engage students and to check for understanding. Most of these questions get planned ahead of time and are written in a lesson plan.
2. When I am panning a lesson I will add content that I need to go over on the lesson plan. There is more than just outlining the "how" of what I am teaching on this document. It should be here is what and how i am going to teach. 
3. Predicting answers of students ahead of time is key to keep yourself in line with what your students will say and how deep into a subject you can get. 

2 Connections to previous classes at Penn State:

1. In my Edthp class we discussed a lot about keeping in mind students backgrounds. Not every student has the same home life and this is something I always considered but, never thought how it would effect how I design my lesson.
2. I also noticed a connection to Kolb's Experimental Learning Theory. The idea of where we start a lesson and how to introduce the topic to your students is a key aspect of structuring a lesson. This connects to Kolb's because you can start the students with an experience first to engage them or physically do a task and then learn about the content that goes with it. This is all designed by the teacher and it comes back to your lesson plan and how we design our lessons based off several . 

After reading about lesson planning I found an article by Edutopia about asking thoughtful questions. This article recaps why as teachers we ask questions to our class and how to do it respectfully to a class.The Right Way to Ask Questions