As a child we are told "Practice makes perfect." While practice is a key part to mastering something we are missing a key component to practicing:reflection
What did I teach?Introduction to Agriculture:
This week I had 2 blocks of Introduction to Agriculture. We looked at safety in our labs at Weiser and safety in the workplace. I utilized the lab, animal room, greenhouse and barn to have students pick out hazards and assess how to over come the hazards in the area.
What did I learn?
The main take away from this week focused around differentiating my classes. I teach 2 blocks of Introduction to Agriculture. In between these blocks is a Current Topics in Agriculture class and my lunch so, I have time to reflect on the Intro to Ag class.Each day I would reflect briefly on how my first block went and make changes before my second block.
While taking several of my education courses in college I always heard about methods of active reflection. Never having been in a classroom I never got to utilize this skill. Now that I am in the classroom I can see this coming into play and how it has benefitted me teaching the same class twice a day.
I think actively reflecting also helps me tailor the methods of delivery of content and discussion to the particular class I am teaching. I know block 2 is a quieter group than block 4 so, I can add more discussions and time for group work in that block because of the student dynamics. At the end of each day I also speak with my cooperating teacher to discuss how I can improve each lesson. The idea of engaging in this reflection no matter how successful the lesson might have went is important to me as an educator and will help my future students as well.
Goals for next week?
This week I am starting a plant science unit with Intro to Ag. While doing this I plan to be hands on in the lab and greenhouse a lot. I want to focus this week on managing a lab setting. This is very different than a classroom setting since I need to trust my students more. I also want to foster a more inquiry based learning environment. I plan to have students experimenting with plant health and growth. I need them to know it is okay if the experiment did not go exactly as planned or if their hypothesis is not supported by the results.I will be picking up the Current Topics in Agriculture Class this week! In this class I am starting with animal genetics. I need to make sure that I keep the students within their zone of proximal development. There are 10 students in this class but, all with different interests and backgrounds. I need to make sure my content engages all students no matter the interest/ previous knowledge of the student.
Questions?1. When students are working in groups, how do you keep all the students engaged?
2. When working in a lab with a huge class, how do you keep students all engaged as they finish? Some groups might finish earlier than others but, I do not necessarily want to give them busy work.
Teaching the same course twice presents both challenges and opportunities. Great to see you working to improve the delivery daily. As for the groupwork, make it clear what task they are to be doing when they are finished with the main task ahead of time. I too, don't like "busy work". The work they are doing when complete should be meaningful, or the will simply see it as a time waster. Sometimes this can be reading a book/magazine or doing tasks around the lab/facilities.
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