Are You Asking the Right Questions? (WW#5)

 

 This week I had the opportunity to read a couple articles about how we as teachers can ask appropriate questions that maximize our students' learning abilities. At first this topic made me think, "are questions really that big of a deal?"; however, I found that questions are a huge part of every lesson and can improve students' comprehension of content. It's our job to effectively create, clarify and respond to questions in our classroom in ways that build critical thinking skills.                        

                   

 

In my AEE 412 class we have been talking about Bloom's Taxonomy and how we can write effective learning objectives accordingly. My mind has slowly but surely been grasping this concept of how to write appropriate objectives. One question that came to mind while learning about Bloom's Taxonomy was, "does this concept only apply to only writing objectives?" After reading this week's articles I was able to answer my question.

 

 

The answer to this question is "NO." James E. Dyer explains that questions are categorized into two different levels: lower- level and higher-level. The lower-level questions pertain to the "lower-levels" in Bloom's Taxonomy and higher-level questions align with the "higher-levels" in Bloom's Taxonomy. At least this is how I went about understanding and remembering this concept. This is all beginning to unravel for the more I learn about Bloom's Taxonomy. I am realizing that these levels of cognitive thinking can be and should be applied throughout your entire lesson. These components should be aligned in order to aid students to a successful end result of higher order critical thinking.

 

I also realized that there is a lot of preparation when crafting the appropriate questions. Not only should questions be aligned with the level of learning that your students are on, but teachers also need to be prepared to respond to students. Teachers may need to clarify a question if students do not understand what you are asking. Students might ask you a question in return that you don't know the answer to. In these cases, how are you going to respond? I realized after reading these articles that teachers need to be prepared for any situation that might come about. We ask questions to engage students, however, we must then be prepared to facilitate them and appropriately respond to them.

 

 

As student teaching is approaching, I often fear that my students are going to ask me questions that I will not have the answer too. Immediately I worry that if this happens my students wont think highly of me and rather not take my teaching seriously. Although a fear of mine, I have been thinking of ways that I can work with these situations. First of all, the article I read for this week reassured me that it is impossible for teachers to know the answer to every single question that their students ask. Phew! Secondly, the article had some solutions for these scenarios. One was to direct the question to the rest of the class and see if any other students know the answer. I thought this was clever. I also thought that with technology being a booming business for kids these days, why not allow them to utilize their cell phones or other devices to quickly research their question and share it with the rest of the class. I wouldn't want to over use this strategy but in some cases it might prove beneficial. Overall, I think that it's important for teachers to be quick on their feet in responding to students and the best way to do that is to be prepared. I hope to have these tools that I learn about and gain ready to pull out of my toolbox and use as part of my classroom management strategies.     

 

 

 

Below is a link to an article that comes from Harvard on this topic of questioning. They propose an interesting technique to utilizing questioning in the classroom. They suggest encouraging students to formulate their own questions. Click the link below and check out this new technique that allows students to develop critical thinking skills!

 

Link: http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/27_5/helarticle/teaching-students-to-ask-their-own-questions_507#home

Does this Interest You?

This past week in our AEE 412 lab we had to do a ten minute lesson on an interest approach we would use in one of our lessons. First I should say, I LOVED this! I was so surprised by all my other classmates' creativeness to create effective interest approaches. I thought my classmates really stepped up their game this week. As a result we all gained more ideas about how we could create variability to our classrooms and utilize these different interest approaches. I know I jotted down these good ideas and I hope to use them in my future lesson plans. They were all more tools that we can add to out toolbox! 

After reviewing my own video I was able to depict some of my own strengths and weaknesses. By now I think most people have picked up on the fact that I have a pretty outgoing and sometimes eccentric personality. Although sometimes I get the label "spunky" I think this allows me to be comfortable in front of my learners and enthusiastic about teaching. I think this is one of my strengths that also allows me to be engaging with my students.

I was very happy with the results of my lab this week. I definitely prepared more and I believe improvement was the result. If you were to look at my video last week, you might notice that I said "um" more than one is suppose too. I found that it became really annoying after awhile and my students probably thought the same thing! I noticed that from watching my video and therefore this week my goal for myself was to develop a strategy that would help me not use these filler words. Being prepared definitely helped with this. Because I had my agenda for myself for class memorized and knew exactly what activity was coming next, the words naturally came to me. In the lab before I think I struggled remembering what task to cover next in class and this resulted in me using filler words. It appears though that I am progressing. My strategy? Prepare and practice!

I notice that I also struggle with a "being in the zone" problem. It's not a huge problem and most people may not even pick up on it; however, what happens is that I get very excited and enthusiastic about the content that I'm teaching or the activity we are about to do that I loose sight of my actual students involvement. I forget to mentally observe if my students are "checked in" or "checked out." I think to help this I might need to just slow down a bit. This is allow for amble time to check for understanding and still cover all necessary content.

Overall, I learned the importance of an interest approach and strategies I can utilize to hook my learners into my lesson. These are valuable skills that will help my students learn content more easily and engage them more in my classroom. This was a good learning experience for me and I hope to continue to gather resources that will help me to develop awesome sauce interest approaches for each of my lessons!

First Day of School Lab Reflection

The first day of school is always the strangest. You don't know the other students in class, they don't know you and worst of all you are wondering what in the world is your teacher going to be like. Knowing these thoughts that run through students' heads, we as teachers can help ease students on their first day of class. Our second lab in AEE 412 did just that. We created an activity where our students got to know each other, we covered our expectations, procedures and consequences, and we could even start teaching some content. It was a lot to fit in a 10 minute lesson but it was all necessary for a real life "first day of school."

I will say that this lab was harder for me to develop something creative. I feel like students don't like going over the expectations, procedures and consequences because they find them boring. My goal with this one was to find something creative so that they will remember my classroom guidelines. Although I really liked the activity I had created I found that the more creativity you add the more time you will need. We had only 10 minutes to present these things and I found that I ran out of time. Although in real life teachers will have more than 10 minutes, this was a challenge of the lab, to find appropriate and concise ways to fit the content into the allotted time. I had definitely failed this aspect of it and I hope that I can use this as another learning experience to work on these areas of time management.

After watching my video I picked up some other attributes of myself as a teacher that I thought I could work on. I noticed that I said "um" a lot! I don't think I usually use those fillers words that often, but I will admit that I did not put as much time and preparation into this lab as I did my last lab. I think that because of this I didn't have as good of a flow to my lesson and that resulted in me using filler words to help me think of what I wanted to say next. After watching myself I started to find it really annoying that I kept using "um" and so it made me think that my students probably felt the same way! It also made me realize the importance of being prepared and fully understanding the flow of my lesson. If I can better grasp this, I also think I will be able to create better transitions from one activity to the next. Transitions are another aspect that could use some work. I think one of the biggest concepts I learned from this lab is that although I have engaging activities, they wont effectively work unless I (the teacher) effectively communicate and facilitate each one. This requires me  to be prepared in knowing how I will transition from one activity to the next.

One more aspect to consider is the behavior of my students. This was a major aspect to consider because it took up much time to correct my students' misbehaviors and questions. I found that this is important to consider when planning a lesson. Also, I noticed that the more your students are engaged the less chatter and misbehavior you will have because they are focused. This was a good teaching technique that I picked up on during my lab activities.

This lab helped me realize even more areas that need improvement; however, it also helped me realize my strengths. In recognizing both weaknesses and strengths I think I can better evaluate myself and focus on these areas for my next lab!  

Reflective Teaching Lesson: Lab Refleciton

Talk about diving right into the content of our classes! Our first day of lab for AEE 412 we student teachers had to give a mini lesson on a random topic that we pulled out of a bag! Of course I picked Chess, something I knew nothing about. However, I quickly did some research and came up with a short lesson that I presented in front of my peers.

By now you are all wondering "well how did it go?" I will start by saying that I put a lot of time and preparation into this lesson and it was only 15 minutes long! I was surprised as to how long it took me to put this together and then how fast it actually took to present. It made me think, "should I have even put that much time into it?" The answer is absolutely yes! I think my lab went well and I yielded great results. I felt that my students were engaged and they were LEARNING. Call me a nerd, but I love that outcome and that feeling of knowing your students are "getting it" or making that connection. If that's what results in my students then I absolutely must put that time and preparation into all of my lessons. This was a good realization for me as a future teacher!

 I get really excited for lessons or activities I need to present in front of others and so I think that gives me an extra boost of enthusiasm into my presentation. I know full well that I am eccentric at times and outgoing but I think that those characteristics enable me to add some excitement to my lesson. This may all sound great but I noticed from watching my video that with enthusiasm comes speed, which I must be cautious about. I think maybe I get too excited and start talking too fast. In reflecting on my video, I was worried that maybe because I talked to fast or even went through activities fast that maybe my students did grasp these concepts enough. This is definitely something I would like to work on.

How could have my lab activity gone better? As mentioned before I could have slowed down a bit. In that back of my mind, I was worrying about the time constraint of my lab presentation. In real life we may have more than 15 minutes; however, this was the challenge and so I need to rearrange or cut out pieces in order to focus on the important content and fit it into those 15 minutes. A bit more organization overall may have helped as well. After watching my video I saw that I left part of my materials on the other side of the room and other materials on the opposite side of the room. I realized that although small details they took up time. I think if I would have had all the materials laid out in one spot the lesson would have flowed better. I also need to work on how to better integrate both my hands on materials and the visual materials I have on PowerPoint or the computer. At one point I got caught up in the hands on activity that I forgot to keep up with my PowerPoint as well. Although I thought my lab went well, there are definitely areas that I can improve on!

Overall, I really enjoyed this lab. Although I hate watching or hearing myself on video, it really is a good reflective tool that will help us become better teachers. I now I know the things that I need to work on for my next lab and hopefully improve those areas.



   

Exploring Learning Objectives and Teaching in Groups (WW#4)

This week our readings focused on many teaching strategies that can be utilized to improve cognitive and learning abilities among our students. There were lots of great points and ideas to keep in mind when developing a lesson plan and creating classroom activities. I especially liked the article by Katy Groseta and Brian Myers from the university of Florida and their discussion about working in groups. Often times in high school teachers would put you into groups last minute and everyone ended up hating the activity because of poor planning and organization. After reading the article it is more clear to me the importance of group learning and most importantly the preparation that needs to go into implementing a group activity. I believe group work can be an extremely useful and beneficial to students' cognitive learning growth; however, I this can only be accomplished with appropriate preparation by the teacher.

 When planning my activities for my lessons or workshops I often put myself in the students' shoes. I ask myself, "how would I like this experience if I were in this situation?" I also  try to think of the diverse learners that I may have. Then I ask myself if my lesson would be effective for all different types of learners. When thinking about this topic my mind immediately goes back to our discussion in class about interest approaches. Interest approaches are another opportunity to engage those diverse learners in your classroom. My favorite thing about interest approaches is that there are unlimited creative activities you can use to build a great interest approach. It's a prime opportunity to be creative with your lesson and absolutely necessary in order to grasp your students' attention. I believe these aspects are important if we are to be effective teachers.

Another important aspect is developing effective learning objectives. I loved what M. Susie Whittington had said about objectives in her article, "Writing Objectives in Secondary Agricultural Courses that Challenges Students to Think." She states "When teachers fail to provide objectives at the beginning of class, students have not received the important pre-directional mind set that is necessary for learning." I will admit that I wasn't always the brightest crayon in the box as a student in high school. I needed to see the importance in what I was learning and I needed to see how it was all fitting together in order for me to be motivated to learn. As many teachers did not do these tasks, it took me longer to understand content and I was delayed in getting engaged in the lesson. This is why writing effective objectives are really important to me. I realize just how important it is that we create  a mind map for our students so that they can easily identify what they are to be learning in each lesson. If I had teachers that went over the classroom objectives for the day, I might have been more on task in school myself. I hope to provide clarity for my students by defining the objectives at the beginning of class everyday.

Bloom's Taxonomy is a great way to determine if we are developing clear objectives for our lessons. We should be keeping in mind what level of cognitive thinking are we helping our students achieve.

I found this really interesting article that links Bloom's Taxonomy and twitter. It mentions some creative ways of incorporating twitter into the classroom according to Bloom's Taxonomy. Check it out: http://www.edudemic.com/22-effective-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom-2/

Engaging Instruction (WW#3)

There were a lot of reading materials for this week; however, I think I could sit here for years reading about how to create an engaging classroom. There is much information to consider and for some reason this topic continuously grabs my attention. I love thinking about how I can create an atmosphere that gets students excited about learning. Students often have negative feelings towards school that automatically holds a dark cloud over the thought of school. Why is that? I aspire to have a class that students can’t wait to come to. I want to see kids show up early to my classes! I know that many teachers reading this may be thinking “good luck that will never happen.” Once again I ask “why is that?” Why not challenge ourselves to achieve the unimaginable. I believe this can be accomplished by being an enthusiastic teacher in an engaging classroom. However, this is our responsibility as teachers to develop this atmosphere and so we must put forth the effort if we desire to witness this positive outcome. In understanding that I am accountable for this type of learning success, I often challenge myself to “step up the game” in order to ensure student success.

Each of the readings this week provided insight on a variety of ideas and thoughts on this topic of developing engaging instruction. Therefore, I pulled out pieces that I felt stuck out to me most.

Article 1: "Motivating Students by Cultivating Self-Worth" by Jonathan Velez

“In agricultural education, we have the unique privilege of being able to work with students in a multitude of environments. This affords us the opportunity to have a greater impact on self-worth than arguably any other teacher in the school. With this privilege, comes responsibility. We have the opportunity to impact students, changing the way they view themselves, and the responsibility to build student self-worth, with the goal of lifelong motivation.”

First of all, I absolutely loved this article. It was very motivational and encouraging for me as a future educator. This excerpt from the article was so empowering for me because it’s these words that constantly remind me why I want to become an Ag teacher. We have a variety of environments to work worth and therefore we can utilize these environments to instill self-worth. Students will be more motivated in classes where they feel secure and confident that they will succeed. Wow, what a responsibility we have a teachers! Although a big responsibility, if we strive to achieve this kind of success in our students then I believe we are teaching more than just content. We are shaping students into successful and competent individuals. How many other occupations can say that? This motivates me to build my own skills so that I can be the best for my students.

   

Article 2: "Actively Teaching: Strategies for Use in the Agriculture Classroom" by Paula Faulker, and Connie D. Baggett   

“According to Mankin et al. (2001), "Students in agriculture, Kansas State University, were asked to identify specific teaching styles, classroom environments, grading methods, and assignment types that motivated them to learn." Mankin et al. found "the most motivating characteristics in each category were an enthusiastic and interesting teaching style, an interactive classroom environment, fair grading methods, and assignment types that provided experience relevant to the profession. The most cited factor reducing motivation was a long, boring lecture."

I immediately thought about the top 5 characteristics of an effective teacher that we talked about in class. Enthusiasm and variability we two of the top five and it appears that they also align with this study which focuses on motivation. I believe an effective teacher encourages motivation among students. How do they do that? I would think that being enthusiastic and incorporating a variety of interesting teaching styles would probably be a good start!  I think an engaging classroom also gets students more interested in class. This article also provides many examples of techniques that have been used that are successful. I enjoy hearing from teachers that have tried these techniques and are able to tell us what works and what doesn’t work. As a pre-teacher this is very helpful information.

 

Article 3: “Anticipatory Set/”Hook”Research Base” by Madelyn Hunter

 “By having an activity related to what will be learned, it shifts their attention to

the learning process. Anticipatory set can also establish a readiness or anticipation for

what is to follow. For the “hook” to do so, it must pique students’ interest.”

 

After reading this I immediately reflected on my summer reading “Teach Like a Pirate” by Dave Burgess. This whole article was almost like a summary of the book. “Hooks” might at first sound like small tasks that consume time; however, from all my readings I have found that they are a vital aspect to getting your students focused on the lesson. Hooks essentially catch your students attention and reel them in for the lesson. My favorite part is that there are so many hooks that you can really spice class up every day. It never has to be the same, which adds variability to your teaching and keeps students excited about your class because of their curiosity and motivation. In this way your students become more engaged in your lesson right from the gecko!

This week in class we also talked about the different types of learners in our classes. Each student is a different type of learner and I think “hooks” are a great way to engage all types of learners in our lessons. They can really be directed towards any of the eight intelligences: Linguistic, spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, naturalist and interpersonal. These eight should be considered when designing our lesson plans, but I think they are also important to consider in our interest approach. In this way we gain the attention of our diverse learners from the start and prepare them to be more engaged in the rest of the lesson.   

 Many teachers may have this fear of not being creative enough to incorporate these activities or interests approaches into their lessons. I am no expert by any means but I would strongly suggest reading "Teach Like a Pirate" by Dave Burgess. He has some awesome suggestions for "hooks" and other engaging materials. Also, below is a link to a website with different interest approach ideas specifically related to Agriculture. Some of them seem more geared toward elementary students; however, many could be utilized for short activities that help students start thinking about the lesson for the day.  Click the link below: http://www.agintheclassroom.org/teacherresources/interest_approaches.shtml  

CHECK IT OUT!

 "What the new world wants is not job seekers but job creators" ~ Paul Collard

Paul Collard is an expert speaker on "The use of creativity and culture to drive social and economic change, and to boost organisational performance." Although he shares reports based on education in England, he has a lot of resourceful information to share about creativity in the classroom.

One example of what their program did in school was have students who were disengaged in class design their own classroom. He states "It's not about having good ideas, it's having the skills to make good ideas happen.... they (the students) came out believing that they can make a difference to their own lives."

 Watch the video to see what kind of classroom the students built!

How Do We Design and Plan Instuction? (WW#2)

How do we design and plan instruction? Boy that's a big question! Before reading the readings for this week I brainstormed and wrote some ideas down of what I thought were important to developing curriculum, a course plan, or even a unit plan. I came up with a variety of ideas and thoughts of my own; however, after reading the readings my list increased by at least a page or two! There is more planning and designing than what I had expected. Although there is a lot of work that goes into designing a plan of instruction, I realize just how important it is to have this in place in order to have an organized and successful educational program. I believe chapter 7 in the handbook explains this need quite well by stating "Because there is so much planning behind the teaching and learning activities that occur in a classroom or laboratory, if a course of study isn't carefully thought out, teachers may resort to teaching a series of incoherent, irrelevant, or articulated topics." Wow, how many times have we seen this happen in schools or even experienced it as a student? It's that last minute, poor planning, unorganized lesson planning that we begin see the irrelevant or incoherent teaching. How does this positively help effect the academic success of our students? It doesn't. As teachers we need to make sure that we build a firm foundation or framework for our program that is well equipped to prepare our student for success.

 I really took interest in the Understanding by Design Framework by  Jay Mctighe and Grant Wiggins. Of the whole article that went through thier 3 different stages of backward design, I captured the the phrase that stood out to me the most, "Learning priorities are established by
long-term performance goals—what it is we want students, in the end, to be able to do with what they have learned. The bottom-line goal of education is transfer.The point of school is not to simply excel
in each class, but to be able to use one’s learning in other settings." I believe this once again reiterates the importance of having an organized plan of instruction for your program. Within your plan you must also make sure that you are achieving transferred learning. While reading this I couldn't help but to think how applicable this is for Agricultural Education. My Ag classes in high school were one of the few classes I can think of that taught me the knowledge, skills and dispositions of a topic that I could utilize in a variety of real life situations. As a future Ag educator I value this impact that my department could have on the cognitive success of each of my students. This is what motivates me to pursue this career path!

However, as I read, it comes with a lot of hard work because "piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance." Planning is key! My thoughts go back to one of our classes in AEE 412 last week when we discussed the top 5 characteristics/behaviors of an effective teacher. In class we did a vairety of mini expereiments that taught us about each of them. Although this would be considered part of the daily agenda, it was well planned out and I could shout these 5 behavors anywhere at anytime of the day. Why? Because I believe the instruction aligned with the educational goals, which means that the lesson was thought through and created in such a way that it met these specific goals. I was able to retain the information more easily because "transfer of learning" was achieved.


 Below is a really interesting video that exemplifies how transfer of learning is being utilized first hand at the college level and how it is impacting our society! Check out this link to read more:

     http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2014/Q3/daniels-awards-prize-for-competency-based-degree-to-purdue-polytechnic-institute.html

What Does AG ED Offer? Let Me Show You!

Hey folks! I am excited to be student teaching in the spring of 2015 at Octorara High School in Pennsylvania. I am so excited that I created this video to show you what all this program has to offer its students. There are a variety of Agricultural Education programs in high schools across the country. Each of these programs offer different avenues of agriculture in the classroom; however, we all share the same passion and goals of achieving student success. I created this video to showcase the program that I will be student teaching in. CHALLENGE: Here is my challenge to you! As mentioned before Ag programs offer a variety of learning opportunities for students and not every program looks the same. Can you find Ag programs in high schools in your state that offer courses, activities, or events different from the ones you saw in my video? Please comment and post links to something new and exciting that you found! I would love to hear from you!

SAE. Learning. Student Success.

SAE visits are in full swing, so watch out students! You better have those records books up to par because your Ag Teachers are coming to check! A few students from Octorara High School had the lucky chance of not only having their Ag teacher come visit, but also a student teacher that will be teaching them in the Spring of 2015. THAT'S ME! I am very excited to be student teaching at Octorara High School. In order to dig deeper into all the responsibilities that Ag teachers have, I had the chance to tag along on an SAE visit. This SAE visit took place on a dairy farm in good ole Chester County. Although Chester County is known for their equine industry, two heavily involved young ladies (sisters) in FFA were proud to show us their dairy cows. First we set a date that worked for both them and their parents (it's important that parents are present in order to make important connections!). We visited the King dairy farm on Thursday August 28th. We decided to meet in the evening around 7. This way we wouldn't be interrupting dinner or their milking time.

Teaching Moment: Timing can be easily overlooked; however, this is a vital component of an SAE visit. As an AG teacher you are going into a student's home and therefore you must be respectful of their time and facilities. Families also do their daily chores or barn work at different times and it is important to keep these things in mind when conducting an SAE visit. This was the first key tip that I picked up from my SAE visit!

As the new kid on the block I made sure to introduce myself. I didn't want to make the students or parents uncomfortable with an unfamiliar face in their house. After our introductions we were greeted with a pitcher of freshly made raspberry tea (yummy! I should go on more of these visits!). We sat around the family's dinning room table and went through the basics of the girls' SAE projects. Both of them were keeping records on their jobs on their farm which included milking and feeding cows. They both were keeping placement record books. We looked at their record books and the progress they had made over the summer till the start of school. We then set goals for each of them. For example, we wanted the oldest girl to have the journal component of her record book updated by the end of September.

Teaching Moment: We talked with the girls about what they think their goals should be. This gave them ownership in reaching their own goals and of their own success. Also, we provided opportunities for them to complete these goals. The one young lady had a study hall during 4th period and so her Ag teacher offered his assistance during that time. This willingness to help students tells them that you care enough about them and their success. I love the phrase "invest in your students and they will invest in you." I hope that I can find ways to be flexible with my schedule in order to help students if needed.

After we looked at their record books, we wanted the girls to show us what exactly all that writing, journaling, and budgeting was for. So they took us out to their barn where they showed us the actual dirty work. They said the worst part about their job is that sometimes they have to get up at 2:30am to start the morning milking. Wow, what dedication! I liked making this a big deal to them because I don't know too many high school students that would do that!

One awesome aspect that I learned about this family is that this year was a growing year for them. Their full time hired helper had quite over the summer, leaving them with a bunch of work to do everyday. The girls and their mom really pulled through to keep everything up and running. I could tell that it was a major change for them; however, it really bonded the family together in numerous ways. They said they grew in many ways, but it was the relationships that really meant the most!

Overall, the girls loved showing us around their farm and I loved learning from them! From watching them set up the milk house to running the feed cart to cleaning the barn for the night, we saw great passion from these two. They are hard working gals for sure! We spent nearly 2 hours talking to them and listening to their daily chores. I was very pleased to have spent my time on this SAE visit at their farm. It wasn't that long ago when I was in their shoes, scrambling to fill out that record book before my Ag teacher came to visit and cleaning up as much as possible. It was a great feeling to take on the opposite role and instead be the Ag teacher. Although a bit strange at first, I left with this awesome feeling that I was making a difference in the lives of students. We have amazing opportunities just like these to look forward to everyday as AG teachers!

The following are some pictures that I captured from my SAE visit in Chester County:

 

Showing us how they set up
the milk house
 

                                                       

The girls told us "Step into our office!"

Their favorite cow!



They own a tie stall barn and milk
about 80 cows a day!

      
            

What is Teaching and Learning? (WW #1)

Our topic this week focuses on effective teaching. We are challenged with the question: what makes an effective teacher? As we are preparing for our student teaching internships next spring I believe this is a vital question to consider. Our goal should be to be effective in our teaching in order to increase student success.

We were provided with numerous readings that allow us to dig deeper into answering this question of becoming an effective teacher. In an article titled "Enhancing Student Learning Through Teacher Behaviors" the top five characteristics that provide greater opportunity to influence student achievement were identified. The top five were: clarity, variability, enthusiasm, task-oriented and/or businesslike behaviors, and student opportunity to learn criterion material. I couldn't help but to chuckle a bit after reading this because our class came up with a similar list prior to reading this. It seemed hard for us to narrow all the characteristics of an effective teacher into only five terms; however, many of these concepts we discussed also aligned with the article. The article identified these five behaviors based on research, whereas we identified our five characteristics based on experience. I think this proves that we have seen this played out in classrooms and we are confident that obtaining these characteristics will help us achieve success.

Once we have identified these key characteristics, I feel the next step is exploring how we can develop these areas in ourselves. Nobody is born a perfect teacher. It takes practice and it takes many trips, falls, and accidents to give us the courage to get back on our feet and press on. I liked that in class Dr. Foster said it takes sevens years (correct me if I'm wrong) to master a skill. This might be teaching or perhaps just a teaching technique. Either way as new teachers I think we must keep in mind that we are going to fall sometimes but we must remember that it's those tough experiences that are going to make us stronger and better in the end.        

For me this topic and these readings are motivating. I realize that I am a young bug coming into the field with a fresh perspective. Because of this I can develop a firm foundation of positive beliefs about education and my responsibility as a teacher. To me it's encouraging to know that I can impact the lives of my students, but in order to achieve this goal I might need to first evaluate myself. This means looking at my strengths and my weaknesses. My goal this semester is recognizing those weaknesses and developing the needed skills to improve those areas. Oh, and don't forget about the strengths because they are just as important. I hope to use my strengths as encouragement to myself and others. Another challenge for myself: how can I also encourage others by recognizing their strengths? I think it's important that we also uplift others this semester by recognizing the good in each of our peers!  

Do You Dig It?

Oops! Here is a post from this summer that I forgot to publish; however it has some great thoughts that I feel I need to share. Enjoy!


It was back to the gardens today! We had lots and lots of helping hands today. We didn't know this prior to arriving but a missionary group was in all week weeding our garden plots and they look great! What a blessing. That means that we could skip this "weedy" step and cut right to planting the seeds.


Today we planted sunflower seeds and gourds. First we had the kids work some pete moss into the soil and dig out large rocks. I have never seen kids so excited to find rocks! We made the whole rock search a competition to see how many rocks we could pull out of the soil. Let me tell ya, as soon as we said go the kids raced out into the garden and less than a minute later I had swarms of kids surrounding me holding up their rocks and showing me their latest and greatest finds. They were so proud that they had found even the smallest of rocks and the wanted to show me in the worst way. They desired my recognition and praise for the "treasure" they found.

Be imaginative. This is something these kids are constantly teaching me. Picking up rocks? Well that just sounds boring. But what if we went on a treasure hunt and found cool unique shapes, sizes and colors of objects buried in the soil. Now that sounds so fun I might start digging my own hole! At first it started off as just a rock picking day; however, as kids started picking up what they thought was history or special objects it became fun and exciting. One little boy insisted that he found a diamond, which was really just a soil plastered rock. For some reason I just wanted to tell him "no, that is just a rock!" It was then that I was reminded of how "adultish" I was being. As adults I feel we often lose this sense of wonder and creativity. We can get so wrapped up in proving the reality of  things rather than considering different perspectives. In this sense we have a lot to learn from kids. They are so easy going and wondrous! Sometimes it's ok to be a little "childish" and not so much "adutlish." (Speaking of which, why is childish a word and not adultish?  I can tell it's not by the little red squiggly line underneath the word letting me know that I have a miss spelled word. Although bothersome, I'm keeping it because I think it should be a word!)


 So, after breaking this wall of feeling the need to crush this child's dream by telling him what he was actually holding was just a plain old rock, I actually acknowledged these kids findings with a new perspective. They had bunches of fun finding rocks and other "treasures." The site is actually where a bunch of houses used to be located until they burned down in the 60s. So the things the kids were digging up were pretty cool!


After we dug and picked out all the big rocks, we then were ready to plant! They planted the sunflower seeds and gourd seeds in two different garden plots. Randomly students would come up to me and ask me if we were going to give our seeds water. They were very worried that they wouldn't grow if we didn't give them water. Although I was impressed with their concern for these seeds, more importantly this told me that they were learning! This told me that they were thinking "ok, so we planted these seeds in the ground, they are already outside getting sunlight, and now the only thing they need to grow is water." They had learned in previous lessons about the resources that plants need to grow. Instead of sitting in a classroom repeating this information and asking "hey kids what are the natural resources that plants need to grow?" and then hearing the crickets chirp in the background, kids were outside experiencing first hand what plants themselves experience. Kids were actually coming to me and asking where we could get water for the plants and seeds. This is just one of the many reasons why I strongly believe in hands on learning. Students "experience" the learning and they make these in-depth connections. I could go on about the countless benefits of experiential learning, but I think I have done enough rambling for today! There will be plenty more about experiential learning topics to talk about, so keep reading!