Spreading the word about Environmental education

As a kid growing up I have always been extremely interested in being outdoors and working in the woods. Once I hit 9th grade I joined my first agriculture class. One of the first topics we started learning about was forestry. By the time I got into my senior year of agriculture, some of the topics we covered included: Forestry, Wildlife, Aquatics, Reptiles, Amphibians, and much more. My passion for the environment had expanded tot he point where I wanted to learn everything I could about environmental science. 

Now as I look back, had it not been for those agriculture classes I probably would not be at Penn State today. I especially wouldn't be planning to teach some of the same materials I tried to much to learn in high school. 

As a senior in Agricultural education, I am preparing for a "Genius Hour" talk during one of my lab periods. The topic I would like to discuss is obviously environmental science. So I would like to purpose some questions for my followers:

-How can we include more environmental education into our agriculture courses to improve environmental literacy among high school students?

-What methods could be used to ensure no students leave the program without a basic understanding of the environment. 

-What types of new technologies have come out that could help us get students interested and engaged in environmental science. 

I would love to hear some of the answers and ideas that everyone comes up with and hopefully be able to use some!

Interest Approach Lab

What we did:
Yesterday, we had another lab! This time we were to design and implement an interest approach for a class of our choosing. I decided I was going to present the students a scenario with a small gas engine and have them attempt to diagnose the issue. I incorporated the "Thank, Pair, Share approach into the scenario and have the students partner up after considering the options and discuss with a partner the solution they came up with. Once the students paired up I asked each group to share with the entire class exactly what types of issues they decided upon.

During this lab, we also had to work with our classroom management skills. Each student in the class was assigned a role to play to help us asses how we handle different situations. Some of the roles in the class included: the bully, the chatty student, and the technology student.

How I handled the approach: 
Overall I thought the approach went very well in terms of the students learning what I wanted them to. As I look back at my performance though I notice that there are a few key areas for me to improve. First I need to continue to improve on my clarity in my lessons. There were multiple times where I noticed I was at a loss for the right word or that I forgot to explain a certain part of the approach. I can improve on this with better planning and preparation in my lesson play.

The other area I need to improve on still is my enthusiasm. I certainly did better this week, but I am still not where I want to be in terms of being excited about a lesson I am teaching. If I can't be enthusiastic about a lesson how can I expect my students to be?

I do believe my strongest area is my one-on-one engagement with the students. As they are working I find it very easy to walk around and discuss what students are doing individually. I feel as though I can work with this strength to improve the students learning

What did I take from this:
Once I begin student teaching, I plan on developing and implementing more interest approaches. Some of these may completely blow up in my face, but unless I am willing to attempt them I will never be able to design better ones to help the students.

Right now I will continue to work on my delivery when teaching lessons, especially when it comes to my clarity and enthusiasm, and find new and creative ways to work off of my strengths.

Cooperative Learning Strategies

For this Weekly writing, I read the article Using Cooperative Learning in Formal and Non-Formal Education by Katy Groseta and Brian Meyers. In the article, several different strategies to improve and manage cooperative learning were discussed. Some of these strategies include: limiting groups to a maximum of four students, only intervening when the groups absolutely need it, and making sure the groups have students of all skill and knowledge levels. When students get the chance to work without a teacher telling them what to do and in groups of other students with different levels of knowledge experience, students will flourish.

After reading this article, I decided to do a little bit more digging. I found this website which gives several different examples of Cooperative learning activities for teachers to use.

How will I use this?

While I am student teaching, I plan to use several different cooperative learning activities. One example of this is in my Small Gas Engines class, the students will have the opportunity to work together to prepare and present a skit or demonstration of the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) while working on an engine. I believe this will give the students the opportunity to really understand why we require the PPE that we do in a shop setting.






In Conclusion

Cooperative learning can be a powerful tool when it is used properly. We as educators need to be sure we are always giving the students the experience they need to improve upon themselves. Once the students graduate and leave the schools, They will need to be able to efficiently work with other people in all types of settings; cooperative learning activities give the students the chance to build the skills required to do these tasks.

First Day of school

Today we did a mock first day of school in 412 lab. I had a lesson prepared to help the students learn each others names and for me to learn theirs, and also we went over the expectations, procedures, and consequences for the classroom.

After reviewing the video of my lesson I have identified two major areas I need to improve in. The first area is my enthusiasm. The second area is my preparation for class overall.

First I need to improve on my enthusiasm in the classroom. Whenever I taught this lesson, I had a tendency to be very quiet and at some points monotone, This is something that I really need to improve looking into the future. I believe I can improve this by finding better ways to engage the students, and also including music something else that is fun into the class.

The second area I believe I need to improve on is my preparation overall. I knew what I wanted to teach and exactly how I wanted to do it, but when the lesson came, it didn't go quite like I expected it to. I know I can improve this by planning out what I want to do and what to say so that I don't forget at the last minute.

Overall I thought that the class went well, I definitely need to improve my enthusiasm and my planning, but I believe that this is something that I should be able to work on over my next few lessons.

Learning Objectives

This week, we read about all kinds of different interest approaches or "Hooks" (depending on what your reading) and writing objectives. I'm going to focus on the objectives today. I tend to have trouble writing objectives because at this point, and I believe it is because I don't always know what verbs to use to express how what I want to students to do.

After doing a little bit of digging though, I have found this helpful chart that shows the different levels of Blooms Taxonomy, and the different words you can use to signal each level.

To the left, you can see an example of each of the levels of Blooms Taxonomy and a quick description of the level. I believe we should always be pushing our students to try and achieve a higher level of thinking and learning. 

When it comes to student teaching the the Spring, I plan to use this and several of the hooks we have been learning about. I want to build my lessons so that I am pushing the students to think at higher levels as the semester goes on. I also want to students to have fun in the classes I will be teaching which is why I will be using some of the E-Moments we practiced and learned in class (The Little Professor and The Meteorologist were my two favorites). 

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