This past week is a bit blurry for me because so much was going on and I feel like I didn't even have time to breathe. The week started out normal and ended early because of Easter which is lucky for me because I need this long weekend to plan an awesome week for the students next week! Especially since I won't be around much at all next week due to a field trip, visit to Midd-West, and a trip to Penn State.
Like I said though, a lot of stuff happened this week! A few highlights included a visit by the Animal Care Sanctuary to talk to Animal Science Students about animal shelters, planting some new plants in Plant Science, and making butter in Animal Science II.
An Sci 2 made butter while learning
about the dairy industry
I feel like I have improved with my planning of lesson plans. Planning ahead of time made it possible for some of the students to make butter and I got rolls so we could have some food to eat the butter with.
It was a great, short week that made me realize some of the things I need to improve on. My cooperating teacher ended up very ill this week and missed a day of school that was planned for her to take some students for parliamentary procedure and public speaking for the area. I realized that day that I do not work well under pressure and I struggle with recovering from that. I was stressed with her being sick and I felt like I just could not pick up my confidence in my teaching the rest of the week. I want to try and work on my
Plant Science students planting
confidence and independence for the rest of the experience.
Special shout-out to Kelsey Henry for visiting Wellsboro this week.. and looking forward to visiting Janae Herr at Midd-West this week!
The
Pennsylvania Department of Education defines a
Student Learning Objective (SLO) as a process to document a
measure of educator effectiveness based on student
achievement of content standards. Basically, SLO's are used to evaluate teachers based on student achievement. While at Wellsboro I have been implementing some SLO research by trying to determine if online or paper homework is more effective for student completion.
SLO research data
I realized in my first few weeks that I struggled getting my students in Animal Science I to complete homework assignments on time. I decided that I could look deeper into this. Specifically, if I understand how I can provide homework assignments through the most convenient platform then maybe I could increase the amount of students completing homework assignments. At the start of this research I thought that online assignments would have a higher completion rate. I thought this mostly because Wellsboro is a one-to-one program meaning every student has a laptop. I thought with such easy access that there would be more students completing homework. I know there are various variables that could affect the outcomes of my assignments, but I found that my students more readily completed the paper assignments. Over 2 weeks I recorded the homework assignments I assigned and how many of the students completed them in each class. I have 2 periods of Animal Science which gave me more data to work with (another reason I chose to work with Animal Science). My findings really have me interested in why I had better completion of the paper homework copies. Just reflecting on it, I have a few theories: 1) Maybe those homework assignments were shorter and easier for students to complete or 2) Having a paper on them reminded them that there was an assignment instead of having it on their online portal that they may not look at again for the rest of the day or 3) They had multiple days to complete the online assignments and not the paper assignments so maybe it gave them more time to forget the assignment. I'm really not sure if my data was accurate because of the varied assignments, but it really has me thinking of how I might want to communicate with students about homework completion. I may have to assign more paper than online and maybe implement a process to remind students of homework!
First, I encourage you to take 2 minutes out of your day to watch this awesome video one of my students put together!
One of the 5 FFA members that went to SLLC also missed 2 more days of school (total of 4!) for a horse expo. She was responsible for the notes in class, but wished to do something different for a project. I told her that the other students would be doing a project and that she had to do a project worth similar weight and time put into it. She has expressed interest in vlogging in the past so this became the perfect opportunity to assign a similar project. She was assigned the task of reflecting on SLLC... and the above video is the outcome! (which she gave me permission to publish and she posted on youtube).
An Sci II students created head bands,
notched an assigned number, and then
had to read/record their classmates notches
I only just received my final class this week, so I'm working on a full teacher schedule now! 5 weeks to go and this teaching thang is in full swing. With that comes stressful days, sleepless nights, but also endless smiles. I'm used to working with theses students and they're getting used to me which (I think) has done wonders for my classroom environment.
Positives:
Plant Science were assigned certain insects
(caterpillar, butterfly, etc.) and had to eat food
using only their assigned part - one student had
a straw while one student could only use teeth!
I felt like my creative juices were flowing this week and it made some interesting class sessions! This week ranged from developing (and playing) board games on wildlife in the Natural Resources class, having a game show style eating contest where the Plant Science students had different insect mouthparts, and making a pig ear head band to notch in Animal Science II. Reflecting on the week I feel like I had some great activities that engaged students in the content!
Natural Resources students designed
and developed a game board (per student)
to test their knowledge of PA wildlife!
Points of Improvement:
My biggest goal this week is to further challenge my students. I have tried to make sure I'm testing their knowledge, but I do want to implement more quizzes and other evaluation techniques to ensure that they are being rewarded for learning and not just for doing their assigned work. I think a part of me is assigning more projects and work to reward students who work hard and neglecting to reward those students who are retaining the information because of who I was as a student. I easily passed tests and quizzes so I want to reward those students who actually put the time and effort into work - not necessarily those who remember things easily. I realize that I need to assess students on their actual knowedge. This will evaluate how much they are learning, stress the importance of studying/learning the material, and also help me evaluate my lessons. Knowing how they do on their assessments will tell me where I was lacking with assisting them in learning about various subjects.
What a week my experience had to offer! From SLLC (my first time!), a school lockdown, a guest speaker, to docking and tagging lambs - there wasn't a dull moment this week!
State Legislative Leadership Conference (SLLC) was definitely my highlight of the week. It's so great seeing all the great things that happen at FFA Conferences. The highlight of the highlight (if you will) would be the community service that FFA does. The Grand Canyon FFA chapter was assigned to Hope Spring Farm where we spent the afternoon assisting with various farm tasks. This was rewarding because Hope Spring Farm is a farm for disabled adults to come and do work. This is a place that they can enjoy the outdoors and completely be themselves.
Because of SLLC, I only taught for 3 days this week. In a way it was a nice break even though it was still work - it was just different! There were many things going on in just a short week, but I have the following thoughts on my week...
Tagging a lamb in the Animal Science II class
Positives:
Being at SLLC with a small group of 6 students gave me the opportunity to get to know these students outside of the classroom!
Leaving a lesson plan for a substitute is not what I thought - Simple is best!
Spontaneity can be a good thing - Bringing 2 lambs into the classroom wasn't planned until the day before when the opportunity presented itself. Ending a 2 day lesson on sheep was complete with tagging/docking lambs! The hands on aspect really stuck with the students!
Point of Improvement:
This week I want to improve my communication with students. Having a sub in the beginning of the week for SLLC caused some confusion with assignments. To accomplish this I set up a bellower/objective template. I'm going to try it with one class this week and then implement it in other classes if it goes well. Basically this sheet contains the objectives for the week and the bellower for each day with a box to fill in their answers. At the end of the week they will submit their filled in sheet back. I'm hoping this way that the objectives for each day are clearer for students and having to submit their bellower this way will ensure they look at the sheet and make the bellower purposeful!
The weeks feel shorter and shorter as the student teaching experience passes by. Every week I feel like I can't believe how far into this experience I am! Week 8 has passed and there were ups and downs just like any other week.
Not directly related to teaching, my highlight of this week was the opening night of Legally Blonde Jr. The Musical at the high school. It was an amazing event put on by the students. It was highlight for many reasons:
This poster for the musical can be seen throughout the school
I love legally blonde, who doesn't?
A student I have in class had a substantial role - it was so interesting seeing him in a different role other than seeing him in the classroom. In the classroom he is a very outgoing, intelligent student. He played the very serious and intimidating lawyer so it was very different than the student I have seen.
It was heart-warming to see so many other students go to support classmates. I ran into a handful of students I have in class that either came to watch or helped throughout the semester with sets and other tasks. Wellsboro really supports the arts and I loved being a part of it for the night!
As I reflect on what I can do to make the next week (and future weeks) spectacular, there are a few things I would change to further improve in the classroom...
Things to improve on
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I really want to work on organization. From day-to-day I tend to get lost in papers to grade, worksheets to hand out, and lesson plans that should be filed neatly in binders. I really want to start spending a part of my afternoon filing away paperwork in an organized manner to keep track of things. This would mean putting my lesson plans in the appropriate binders, having a set pile of worksheets for students that are absent, and a folder or binder of the paperwork I need to go through at night. Although I file every week - it's not enough to put those papers away once a week (especially now that I have all but one class that I'm teaching).
Along with organization, I want to get ahead with planning a little more so I can be best prepared for lessons. I'm not as far ahead in planning as I would like to be and I hate feeling like I'm not doing my best for the students because I ran out of time to pick up materials. I'm getting better at planning ahead, but there is plenty of room for improvement in that area!
Positives
I feel pretty confident in my teaching abilities - more so than I have in previous weeks. I don't get nervous presenting a lesson in front of students or get thrown off by certain behaviors. I think as time has passed I have developed many of my teaching skills and I find that I don't need to spend as much time practicing how the lesson will go. I still plan it out so I know what questions I will want to ask or what activities - it's just that it comes more naturally in the classroom than it had in previous weeks. My highlight for teaching this week was judging donut holes. Mrs. Berndtson told me that she sometimes does that with students to get them used to the judging process so I gave it a try. I felt like students really enjoyed it and it gave them the background they needed to get ready judging classes of market animals. They put their note-taking and reasons to the test!
