Weekly Web Wonder #9 - Inquiry Based Learning

Inquiry based teaching is a type of teaching where an instructor would pose questions, problems and/or scenarios rather than presenting the information to students through a lecture or a PowerPoint. I believe the best part about the inquiry based learning is how moldable it is to student in classrooms. Saying this, I mean that it can be used in any and every classroom, and students will challenged enough to begin to think deeper. This also can be useful to students by helping them develop skills that would be used in the real world to help create questions, apply new information and seek a better understanding of the issue.

Through inquiry, students learn how to question, investigate, using evidence to describe, explain and predict, connecting evidence to knowledge and then finally share their findings. The first task of students is learning how to question, create those questions into deeper meanings and use them to help solve their problems.

Image taken from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/
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Once students have decided they have created and asked the correct questions, they can move onto the next step of investigating. This is where students would complete their own digging and compete research based on the questions they have asked. Step three is using the evidence to describe, explain and predict what may happen next. This is more individualized work where students can reflect and think about what may happen in the future. Set four is connecting the evidence to knowledge. This is where I will have the most trouble until I get enough practice. I want my students to think about how this connects to the essential question of the day, and maybe how they could build on this if this would ever happen again in a similar way. Lastly my students would be sharing their findings. I want them to share with more people then just in the classroom. I would have them interview someone on the experiment they did, and compare and contrast what they may have learned, taught others, or new ideas or experiments that they would like to try in the future.

Inquiry based learning helps support other standards that are required by your state, and it allows teachers of agriculture to include other classes and possibly work with other teachers to build stronger connections. Overall, inquiry based learning has some of the best outcomes and I can’t wait to be testing it out in my classroom!

References:

Warner, A. J. (n.d.). What Is Inquiry-Based Instruction? - edis.ifas.ufl.edu. Retrieved October 26, 2016, from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/WC/WC07500.pdf

Weekly Web Wonder #8 Individualized Teaching Techniques

Individualized teaching techniques are ways to teach each student by themselves. There are several teaching techniques to ensure success through this method. Supervised study, experiments, independent study, student notebooks and information or task sheets are all individualized teaching techniques.  One thing I plan to use in my future classroom is the student notebooks’. I plan to use them daily as a warm-up and a ticket out. This way, my students can fully prepare for the day and reflect on what they have learned. It is a good way to build interest and start to plant knowledge inside students’ minds. Other ways to include individualized teaching techniques in my classroom is through experiments. I plan to create experiments and labs in my lesson plans. This way, students will work individually in completing experiments by asking themselves questions, actively thinking and creating solutions to problems that are presented to them.

Image from: http://painterandassociates.com/blog/individualized-education-plans

            Another way I plan to use individualized teaching techniques in my classroom is through supervised study for my students through their SAE projects. This easily relates to the three-circle model, which I also will use with my students by teaching them information, and then having each student create a project for them to work on for hopefully a minimum of 3 years. This allows students and teachers to communicate and work together to identify the objectives and goals that should be accomplished, the students responsibilities with his or her project and then a plan of how to achieve what they have creates for them. This allows students to work by themselves and think at higher levels, which is what I am reaching for. I look forward to using individualized teaching techniques in my classroom because I can adjust it for each individual learner and have each student personally guided through the lesson.

Problem Based Learning Lab

After I completed my problem based learning lab, I felt awesome about what I have completed so far this semester, and I felt that I could easily pin-point my next hurdle that I will be jumping over soon. For my teaching session, I taught my animal science class about biohazards. In this lesson, I decided to create a story where my neighbor Annie has a large flock of sheep and they keep dying. With previous materials that my class would have, they would be able to solve what is killing Annie's sheep.

Some of the feedback that I got from my students and Dr. Rice, as well as myself is that I need to seriously work on my transitions. I need to think of better questions to ask my students. I really want them to dig deep and think at a different level. Another thing that I could have improved upon is my transition from my interest approach to back into my classroom learning setting. Dr. Rice did say I did a good job, but I felt that I could have improved it. With more practice, I do plan to get better. Some things that I did well included the problem that I presented my students. It was awesome to see them thinking simply and then more in depth, like where the sheep had traveled, what the sheep looked like, if they had any previous health problems and so on. I know I had done a great job in creating this lesson to be specifically problem based for my students to take control and find the answer. I plan on using this lesson for my biodiversity unit at McGuffey, and I can't wait to improve upon it!

Weekly Web Wonder #7 - Evaluating Learning

This week I feel as everything is starting to come together. I am beginning to feel much more confident in my teaching abilities and the way I present information to a class. I feel that I can easily explain what I am thinking and have a classroom with students grow and understand. With this, I do feel uncomfortable with the word 'assessment'.

Throughout my years of education, I have a cultivated a strong dislike for timed events and tests. My anxiety levels usually get so high that I blank out, I would start crying and nothing would be accomplished. Throughout my student teaching experience, I would like to be able to give exams and quizzes as assessments, but I would like to look at other ways to measure growth in my students. This week's readings have really helped me with this.

Other than having an exam, have a project where the students are thinking at their highest level and create a rubric. A rubric is beneficial to both students and teachers through keeping expectations clear and concise, a pretty simple and straight forward way of grading and is beneficial to both group and individual student assessment.

One thing that I really enjoyed and took away from this that I plan on doing is after I know my student for a little, I plan on having them create their own rubrics, with my assistance. This way, I know the students will be active in their learning and I can be sure to help direct them accordingly.

Something very similar to rubrics include concept maps. I have yet to create my own concept map, but I am in love with the idea of them because of how they can connect so many different ideas and situations together. This really can spark that student engagement and knowledge, which I am so excited to see for my students in the spring of next year!

Image take from: https://www.travelingcoaches.com/
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Looping around and coming back to typical assessments of giving tests and quizzes, I also learned how to best set up quizzes. From experience as a student, I know that most of the easier questions should be at the beginning of the exam then rather at the end. This helps the student 'warm-up' to more difficult and higher level thinking questions. Other tactics that I learned include different ideas about short answer questions. As short answer questions allow the student to recall different yet specific material from class, it is something where they can make answers their own. As a teacher, it is important to read through the short answer questions as throughly as possible, as some students may write the same thing over and over again and not answer the question in its entirety.

Evaluation of learning is a large concept that many people focus on. State officials want the hard numbers, so up until this point, it is very important to make sure you are on track with your teaching and your students 'get it' and are growing as much as they can. I look forward to using some of the different assessment techniques for the spring that I have read about this past week and as I continue to search for more questions and answers
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Weekly Web Wonder #6 - Looking at Problem Solving Approaches

I close my eyes and imagine myself back in 10th grade in my English class, biology class and health science classroom. Thinking about those classes, I can easily pick out which two were my favorites, the english and biology classes. I remember sitting in the middle of my classrooms and being fed information. Some days in English it was through reading and acting out what we had read and meaningful discussions. In biology we would have a problem where there were several steps to complete it and solve it, and then apply it to a lab experiment with my group. Health class was a little different. Our teacher would lecture us for the entire block period, or we would watch a movie and fill out a worksheet to show that we were paying attention. Unfortunately, I don't remember much from health class. I never saw the importance of it other than to show my teacher I could get a good grade.

I read a few articles for todays blog post, but one that caught my attention was a article called Main Course, Not Dessert written by John Larmer and John Mergendoller. Through their article, they give a story as to how a student convinced other students about a specific country and the attractions it had other than the history and the jungle. In the story, the students were passionate and truly interested in what they were learning and discovering. I have had my fair share of projects that I did just to complete them and get a grade, but after reading a few articles, I can't wait to add purpose to my classroom and students. I will strive to make my classroom projects into project based learning. I want students to gain knowledge they will retain and share. One way I plan on doing this, is have students inform others about what they learned, why it is important, and what they had gained. Learning is more enjoyable, when you can also teach others. It brings people together.

Image found from:http://idbyid.blogspot.com/2011/01/chunking-principle.html

When creating knowledge and teaching my students, it is important for me to know what levels of knowledge there are. There are three declarative knowledge types, which include facts, concepts and principles. The facts are at the lower part of the spectrum. This is just a student knowing a simple fact. This just involves memorization. It can be as simple as knowing Valentine's Day is February 14th. The next level up is concepts. Concepts include knowing multiple and being able to name off a few examples. An example of this would be naming holidays that people celebrate in the United States. These examples include Valentine's Day, Christmas, St. Patricks Day and Halloween, just to name a few. Moving on we go to the principles. Principles explain the 'knowing why' something happens. This could include why we celebrate Thanksgiving and how it starts many years ago. Learning about all of these concepts really make me want to dig deeper in my classroom and have my students at the level of using principles. Although I know we can't just start at principles, so it will be a learning process for all of us!


References:

Kirkley, J. (n.d.). Principles for Teaching Problem Solving. Retrieved October 2, 2016, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.8503&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Main Course Not Dessert (by BIE) | Project Based Learning | BIE. (n.d.). Retrieved October 02, 2016, from http://www.bie.org/object/document/main_course_not_dessert#

AEE 412: Model Unit Plan - Introduction to Greenhouse Production

Last week, I created my very first unit plan. I was pretty excited to begin this journey, but extremely nervous when creating this, knowing I may be creating these for the rest of my life. Wow! 

My reviewers were Nate and Matt S. Both of them gave me a great amount of help. I learned that I need to have planned out my unit plans a little bit more. I forgot to include the number of materials I would need, and I also found out I was putting in my Common Core Standards and any other standards in wrong! I was only adding half of what I needed! Thankfully through my peer reviewers, I was corrected and now I can successfully add the materials I need to all my future unit plans and lesson plans. 

One thing that I really enjoyed from this assignment of peer reviewing, was how to format our unit plans. From reviewing two other students unit plans, I actually wish I could have reviewed more. I wanted to see how others would set their unit plans up and organize them. One persons unit plan that I did peer review was a bit scattered. I liked how some people grouped their item together per lesson plan, and I found it really helpful if they wrote that a lesson plan would go on for two or more class periods. This was extremely helpful. 

Another thing that I learned about peer reviewing and working with my cohort is that we made a shared Google Drive so that we could share our lesson plans, unit plans and materials.  This is super helpful to all of us, because if I needed help or some ideas on what to do for a biosecurity and diseases, I could easily look up some of my classmates materials and create my own lesson and objectives from that.  Overall, this was an extremely helpful project for not just our lesson plans, but for us to work together as a cohort.