Weekly Investment #7

What is the Problem-Solving Approach?

The problem solving approach is the root of project based learning for students to utilize projects "as the main course" for active learning, rather than "dessert" as a way to applied knowledge after it is learned. For years in education we have separated learning knowledge and applying knowledge, with the problem solving approach we marry the two into one learning experience.

What is Problem Solving? 

Problem solving, otherwise known as the scientific method, begins with an experience and asking a question. From here teachers can guide their students in their learning by aiding in background research, developing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and analyzing results to develop a conclusion.

How is Problem Solving related to Project Based? 

Students can problem solve in the form of various projects. These projects are where project-based learning comes into play. An interesting part of utilization that caught my attention was "the project" can be used interchangeably with "the unit" when project-based learning is fully implemented.

Why?

Project Based Learning and the Problem Solving Approach guide students in developing real-world problem solving skills. Rather than learning rote knowledge students get two forms of knowledge, firs the content they are working with and thinking about, and second the knowledge and practice of the process of problem solving. 

Learning is an active process and is searching for meaning. 

Types of Problems:

Well Structured: The problems always are solved with the same, step-by-step solution.

Moderately Structured: The solutions require adaptions and various strategies to fit to a particular context.

Ill Structured: The students begin with a vague problem and unclear goal. Students solutions are the least constrained and there is not one answer.

There is a time and place for all types of problems within the classroom, these types of problems should be utilized throughout the duration of the course, as projects and problems for students to address.

The First Unit

Thank God for the Growth Mindset...

First, shout out to my AMAZING Cooperating teacher. Mrs. Barzydlo. She sent me over her unit plan template, helped me identify unit goals she trying to cover in the first unit, and gave me guidance on two great summative assessments for the unit.

Building the Unit Plan

1. Unit goals are easy to identify, lesson objectives to help scaffold students up to those big picture goals.
2. Summative assessments can be challenging to write to reflect the level of thinking you taught your students on.
3. It is rewarding to have a grand-plan to follow when visualizing how one lesson flows into the next.

Peer Feedback

1. Its always interesting to see how others minds work, for me I'm analytical in nature and prefer listed items. For my peers, color, headings, and paragraphs work better for chunking information.
2. There are many ways to accomplish the same task, methods of teaching and how a unit flow together are very dependent on the teacher's and students' styles.
3. Your peers always have your back with grammar, spelling, and checklist items!

Comment below:

1. What challenges you the most when writing a unit?
2. How do you approach and overcome that challenge?

Weekly Investment #6

How do we transition between techniques utilizing effective questions?

Let me geek out for a second, in this week's readings I found a strong connection to my Summer Reading, DRiVE by Daniel Pink! It was even referenced in one of the readings.

Are all questions the same?

Not a chance. Effective questions are meaningful and understandable to students, they challenge students, but are not beyond their reach.All questions, open ended versus  closed, various levels of thinking or more varieties have a place in the classroom for different purposes.

• Closed-ended questions (yes/no response, or multiple choice) quickly check comprehension.
• Open-ended questions require expanded thinking and processing of information. 
• By discussing the questions in groups, students can learn from a variety of perspectives.

What is the coolest teacher “question tip” you want to incorporate?

I often think of questions as a transition piece, simply connecting to chunks of information together. Also, I think of questions as a form of assessment. Both of these are correct, but that doesn't discount other roles questions can play. The first 'Tip" I read hit me upside the head.

Determine your learning objectives and align the questions with the objectives.

Why would asking questions at higher levels of cognition (think Bloom) matter?

First, if you're following my tip above you'll want to ask questions at different levels to align with the learning objectives that you are assessing. 

Second, assessing high levels of cognition allow you to understand how deep a student's level of thinking and learning are occurring at. This assessment also can serve as a form of scaffolding, by asking several smaller questions to get to an end result we can scaffold what the student knows and guide them to piecing together information. 

What is Student Agency or Student Voice?

Student agency is learning through activities that are relevant to learners, driven by their interests. To put it simply, student agency gives students voice and autonomy in their learning. 

Student agency is the one of the core values of inquiry based learning.

Interest Approach Lab Reflection

"The Interest to this Approach is so Dang Frosty!"
Olivia, Beth, and Lisa's quote from our Interest Approach Rap

The purpose of this lab was to adjust our focal point to creating a good hook for our students to grab onto. We were inspired by Lancelot's Principles of Interest which, upon reflecting on my experiences, made A LOT of sense. BUT, Let me tell you, creating an effective interest approach stumped me. I mean, I created good ones before but I think my cold gave me writer's block.

My interest approach:

For day #2 of the first unit in Large Animal Science we are learning the steps of the scientific method and how land-grant universities utilize the scientific method.

I attempted to harness the power of Primary Principle #1 and Secondary Principle #6. The interest approach was to have my students form groups around a lab station with no more than 6 per group. At the lab they will find photos of a species of large animal, but with characteristics they may not be familiar with, such as a Duroc with a red coat or a La Mancha with tiny ears. 

They are given two minutes to write down any questions they have about the Phenotypes of these animals (this term is used specifically to highlight to science terminology and connection). Once the two minutes are up, I use the transition question "How do scientists go about answering questions such as these?"

For lab purposes, due to the lack of people, I adapted the lesson to fit the class I was working with.

How it Went:

Gems

• As the students were writing down their questions, I asked them questions such as "If that pig is a female, what would she be called?" to jog their memory of last class's terminology lesson.
• The students asked great questions and I mentioned that I was proud.
• A Student wrote "I don't understand" down for a question and I couldn't tell who it had been by the hand writing, so I announced "Please free feel to stop me at any point in the future if you don't quite understand what's going on, I'd love to help clear things up for you."

Opps

• As my peers mentioned, for an Ag student this may be too easy
• In fact one of my peers was given the role "Knows-it-all" and I didn't respond how I wish I would have
• I stated "Well, if you know it perhaps you can tell me what we are doing?"
• This was aggressive, looking back, I would want to say "Perfect, I'm glad I have a great student to help me/role-model what needs to be done."
• A Student asked "Must we do all these photos?" and I replied "Well, until you engaged" which as soon as it came out of my mouth I wanted to hit my forehead because this was unlike me.
• I should have responded, "Well, lets see how you guys do first, If you ask some really good questions maybe we won't have to look at them all."

In summary, with my cold, my sassiness came out and I was miserable. As a teacher I'll need to fight through this, but I do realize even Good Teachers, have Bad Days. I definitely learned from this experience quite a bit and look forward to the next challenge ahead. 

Weekly Investment #5

What structure do we need in our instruction? Applying Instructional Design Techniques 

"Imagine embarking on a road trip across the United States to a specified, but unknown to you destination. To further complicate the situation, you are forbidden to take a map or to stop to ask for directions.  Obviously, the frustration would quickly become overwhelming and the anxiety of “it all” could cause you to give-up before you really got started.

Students feel the same overwhelming frustration and anxiety when teachers fail to provide objectives, the roadmap, if you will, at the beginning of the class session."

By M. Susie Whittington, 2005 Agriculture Education Magazine

Key instructional design techniques such as objectives and proper assessments for those objectives give students the structure needed to learn. Additionally, simply including these items in your lesson plan is not enough. 

You Must:

1. Fabricate quality objectives based on what you want the students to accomplish
2. Develop proper scaffolding in the lesson plan to achieve this goal
3. Create an effective assessment that gauges how well students met your goals and objectives.
• It is critical to assess the objective, be sure to match the level of Bloom's taxonomy that the objective is on, to the assessment. 

Speaking of Bloom's Taxonomy:

How does Bloom’s Taxonomy impact instructional design?Your lesson is centered around the daily objectives, Bloom's taxonomy ranks these objectives on different levels on comprehensions. Well designed units and courses ask students to "level up" with their understanding of the content as they continue to work with the information.

How can Group Teaching Techniques be Effective? 

 Working in small groups allows learners to develop a wide range of social skills such as listening to others, taking turns, contributing ideas, explaining oneself clearly, and encouraging others. These social skills are equally critical to learning and development for career readiness. Unfortunately, most objectives are set to meet state standards, which don't account for these soft skills beyond elementary levels. 

Lab #1 First Day of School

First day in Large Animal Science

In January, I will have the good fortune of teaching my first lesson on the first day of the new semester. This means I will truly have new students, right out of the box. Therefore, the lesson plan which I created and gave a 10 minute snap shot on, would be an incredibly useful tool for student teaching.

For this lesson I formatted my lesson plan, in addition to a classroom management plan with included three posters. These posters have the Procedure, Expectations, and Consequences for my classroom.

Check them out and leave feedback on how you'd revise them and why:

Two points of clarification that you may not know about my classroom management posters:

1. The Tech Break, on the procedures poster, is a 5 minute break during the block for students to go to the bathroom, check Schoology in other classes, or check their cellphone. This is considered a "temporary fly zone" in a "No Fly Zone" classroom.

2. The discussion after class under consequences is rooted in the theory of Restorative Justice which I was excited to learn about over the summer. (What are your thoughts on restorative justice?)

Reflecting on my 10 minute snap shot:

Strengths: I put a lot of thought into the lesson and the flow from the student's perspective. 

• I ensured that I mentioned the class upon greeting the students at the door, to weed out students that may be in the wrong class. 
• I had name cards at each seat to address assigned seating without bringing attention to the subject. 
• Once at their desk, students found all the material handouts they would need for the day.
• The bell ringer was written on the board and verbally prompted immediately, allowing minimal time for goofing off.
• As my peers and mentors mentioned, my Alliteration Name Game (when I prompted students to pair an adjective describing themselves with their name) utilized minor cross-curricular terminology and aided my learning in not only the student's name but the student themselves.

Suggestions: Overall I was incredibly happy with my lesson, but as always there is room for improvement. I was thankful my peers and mentors offered meaningful feedback for me to work with.

• I failed to write down the objective on the board or on the power point. It is critical that I look at the big picture as a whole for the day, not just task by task and hope that students get what I want them to.
• In my Alliteration Name Game I had no idea that I responded to what student's shared with just their name. I was gracious when Mrs. Barzydlo pointed this out in Edthena, of course I was still learning about them from what they shared, but I wasn't giving the student validation that I had heard what they said. 
• At Dover Area High School, teachers are asked to use the terminology Bell Ringer, and write an agenda on the board for students to copy. Although I did both tasks, I failed to use the correct word "Bell Ringer" opposed to "Bell Work." 
• I like the schools decision to utilize school wide terminology for students to connect procedures across the board. Prompting the students to do Bell Ringers will result in less resistance when the whole school is using them. I have to retrain my language to make this happen!

Virtual Mentor Exploration #1

"What is your teaching philosophy and/or core values as an agriculture educator?"

This week I was able to Call, Zoom, and Email my virtual mentor team to pick their brains about the prompt listed above. Their responses were intriguing and I felt very compelled to share them with my readers.  

Kevin Keith: National FFA Organization Local Program Success Team member

• ‘Each student in unique, just like everybody else’… they all learn differently, have a different life experience and know more about one topic than anyone else does.

CONNECTION TO WEEKLY INVESTMENT #4 BLOG - Learning Modalities, Multiple Intelligence

• The sweetest thing that most students ever hear is their name, the name that they prefer to be called by, and the preferred pronunciation of it. I have had students with oddly spelled names and had them remember for years that I was the “one person” who remembered how to spell their name and how important it made them feel. 

CONNECTION TO WEEKLY INVESTMENT #4 BLOG - Angela Maiers, You Matter  

• I strive to provide a safe educational environment where a student can develop emotionally, mentally, socially and become a leader in their own way/right (maybe by example, maybe by word, deed, mentoring relationships, etc.)  

• I believe in transparency, in admitting mistakes and apologizing and doing everything I can to ‘make it right’.  

• I believe in the importance of experiential learning, in applying learning to the actual world that the students can grasp… in helping them understand why they might need to know something, how they might use it, and why it might make a difference to them.  

• I believe that one of the most uncommon things is common sense and that we are fools to assume that anyone is a master of common sense.  

• I believe that safety and a knowledge of safe practices in classrooms, laboratories, the workplace, etc. is paramount to success of our educational programming.  

CONNECTION TO AEE 350 - Safety Contract Assignment 

• I believe that it is no accident that agricultural education include classroom and laboratory learning, work based/experiential learning, and leadership, personal growth and career success through the FFA, as it’s philosophical base and feel that it is criminal for any of our teachers to rob the student of one or more of these important components.  

CONNECTION TO AEE 413 - Three Circle Model & Program Planning

• Finally – I believe in a concept I call, “Ya Gotta Wanna” – I believe that everyone can achieve, but it doesn’t just happen, you need to plan, to set measureable goals, to practice, to adjust and refine your plan, goals and process, to measure progress, and practice more…

Mrs. Katie Ranck: Agriculture Educator at Elanco, #PSUAgEd16

Katie believes in fully implementing the three circle model. She utilizes a day in class to cover the three circle model and why it works for agriculture education, this help her students find meaning in what she asks them to do.

SAE is a heavily weighted portion of her students grades. She acknowledges that this is an extrinsic motivator, but owns that there is further recognition and opportunities for her students for them to reach own their own, at an intrinsic motivation level.

FFA is encouraged for all students. I'll have the opportunity to see her implement this circle when I travel with her to the National FFA Convention and Expo this fall!

Classroom instruction is something that she dedicates herself to whole-heartedly. This summer, I saw her investments she made for her students by attending the PAAE conference. 

She added to our phone call that she was beginning her Master's Degree and they had just began philosophy work in the program. The irony of reflection that she was going through for class made it easy to discuss this topic for her. 

Mrs. Renee Cambruzzi: Agriculture Educator at McGuffey

My teaching philosophy is simple; respect, nurture and guide. High school students still need to be nurtured and guided but treated with respect and consideration. They deserve a teacher that is caring and compassionate but is holding them to high expectations and challenging them to reach their greatest potential.

I believe a teacher's role is to guide rather than act as the primary source of information. Students need the opportunity to discover for themselves and practice skills in real-world situations. Providing students access to hands-on activities and allowing adequate time and space to use materials that reinforce the lesson creates an opportunity for construction of knowledge.

CONNECTION TO AEE 412 - Scaffolding

I believe students need to have the opportunity to study things that are meaningful and relevant to one's life and interests. Developing a curriculum around student interests fosters intrinsic motivation and stimulates the passion to learn.When students have ownership in the classroom they are motivated to work hard and to reach their goals.

CONNECTION TO SUMMER READING DRiVE - Autonomy, Intrinsic Motivations

I believe that it is important to nurture positive student / teacher relationships. The more you understand about the students in your room will help you to develop a community instead of just a class. In the classroom community, students learn to effectively communicate with each other and are more likely to feel safe to share their ideas, fail and learn.

I believe that as an agriculture educator it is my job to never stop learning. It is important to make professional development a priority each year to improve teaching practices, curriculum and student success.

Weekly Investment #4

What is engaging instruction?

First Reactions to our readings & TED Talks

Angela Maiers -You Matter TED Talk - "No matter what I do, No matter what I accomplish today is there anyone that is going to notice? Is there anyone that is going to care that I got up, and showed up today?" 

In My Class: Similar to knowing each student's name and saying "I'm glad to see you today" we can step further into helping our students see that we notice them. By implementing a noticing notebook in class, I can acknowledge my students small daily accomplishments. Slipping these points that I noticed into my classes will make the students realize I care about their actions. 

A question I ask of my readers: How do I know when to use the student's name when I notice their actions? Would announcing to the class "Erin did a fantastic job at asking important questions" or "Someone asked really great learning questions, I'm thankful to see everyone thinking so critically" be better?

Kate Simonds - I'm Seventeen - Why aren't our students taken seriously, why do we dismiss their thoughts? 

In My Class - Mastering Inquiry based learning is something I aspire to reach. Teaching students through suggestive questioning and allowing them to inquire about knowledge rather than spoon feeding gives autonomy back to the students in their learning. 

A question I ask of my readers: When is it appropriate to adjust classroom management techniques? Kate Simmons mentioned, We have to raise our hands to go to the bathroom yet in 3 months we are expected to go to college or have a full time job?

Methods of Teaching Agriculture: Newcomb, Et al.

Meaningful objectives (which fall into the categories depicted) must connect to the content we teach. Motivating students through a thoughtful interest approach to hook students will generate curiosity in the "why" or our lesson.

Strategies for Great Teaching: Reardon & Derner

E-moments aid students to connecting chunked knowledge. The pedagogical theory behind E-moments comes from Caine and Caine's 12 principles of Brain/Mind Learning; this book combines some principles to condense them to 9 Principles. 

KEY QUESTIONS

1) How does the uniqueness of our learners impact lesson planning? 

Our learners strengths are on a sliding scale for 8 multiple intelligence, these impact their Learning Modalities. With this in mind we can adjust out instruction and e-moments to fully engage our students to learn the content we are trying to convey. 

2) How does “e-moments”, multiple intelligences, domains and modalities impact instructional design?

Our instructional design should be framed around our students and their needs. As a teacher we must learn our students needs and adjust the lessons as we gather information. 

On the first day of class we won't know how our students learn or their individual needs. Although, we will know that they all learn in different ways and we should plan to vary our methods of instruction until we figure out what works best for our students in that specific class.

The Importance of your local Fair

Having been a 4H, FFA, Alternate Fair Queen, and active volunteer, my local Fair is something that is near and dear to my heart. I owe a lot of my fond memories of the Fair to my 4H leaders and FFA Advisor/Ag Teachers.

I had the privilege to attend the York Fair with Mrs. Barzydlo to complete two SAE visits and see what Dover Area High School Agriculture Students were up to at the Fair. 

The FFA chapter was well represented by their first place educational display, FFA members showing animals, and participants in the Dairy-Skill-a-thon that I got to assist with. 

Additionally, I met with the York Extension Agent Linda Spahr, who was incredibly knowledgeable and her 4H members loved her. Also, we visited the Agriculture Education Building where the Chapter Displayed their Officers with the #IamFFA movement to encourage people to join FFA. 

I was able to ask Mrs. Barzydlo about all the things an Ag Teacher does to prepare for the fair and assist with while the fair is going on. I also asked her what she does to enjoy the fair for herself, which she replied that first you must rotate responsibilities if you have a multi-teacher program, and second you must set aside one day which you come with your family and stick to a no-business policy.

It's safe to safe my experience at the York Fair was AWESOME, and I can't wait to help at my future program's local fair as well.

SAE Visits

As many of my readers know, an ideal Agriculture Education Program embraces the three-circle model. Often times the most difficult circle to include in a program is SAE. Utilizing SAE in the classroom allows students to apply their agricultural knowledge outside the classroom and develop skills that we many not be able to teach inside our classroom.

SAE visits are critical in keeping students on the proper course of growth and development in their SAE projects. Bonuses of SAE visits include bonding with the student and developing a professional relationship and well as gaining a better understanding of their home life and developing relationships with their parents. 

During the York Fair, Mrs. Barzydlo and I visited with two students to complete their SAE visit. One was a dairy beef project and one was a swine project. 

While we visited with the students we asked critical questions about their goals, challenges they faced, and their accomplishments with the project animals. 

The student with the dairy beef project was a graduate that will be receiving his American FFA Degree in October. While we visited he shared some of his beef and cheese bologna with us to taste. He mentioned that there had been a communication error with the local butcher he uses and they had made the bologna roll larger than the previous times, which he was not please about for sale purposes.

Both students were showing several animals at the York Fair and were excited. They felt confident in the animals they raised

Exploring Dover Area School District's Agriscience Program

If you want the Insider's Scoop on what goes on at Dover Area High School's Agriculture Program, check out this video of my cooperating center!



PS: Mrs. Barzydlo and Ms. Boltz were planning to have a guided video tour of the department during their August check in, but a sudden, strong thunderstorm knocked the school out of power!

Weekly Investment #3

What is a plan and who are our learners?

The week's weekly investment explored the planning process for courses and how we connect material we aspire to teach to our learners.

We explored backward design in course planning, scaffolding, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Understanding by Design and other methods for instructional planning.

1) How do we plan for instruction?

Instruction is best planned for with the end result in mind. First, we must identify the desired results. With the result in mind to format an essential question.

Then, we must plan for assessment of learning. According to ASCD.org's Understanding by design there are six facets for understanding for assessments:

When someone truly understands, they:

• Can explain concepts, principles, and processes by putting it their own words, teaching it to others, justifying their answers, and showing their reasoning. 
• Can interpret by making sense of data, text, and experience through images, analogies, stories, and models. 
• Can apply by effectively using and adapting what they know in new and complex contexts. 
• Demonstrate perspective by seeing the big picture and recognizing different points of view. 
• Display empathy by perceiving sensitively and walking in someone else’s shoes. 
• Have self-knowledge by showing meta-cognitive awareness, using productive habits of mind, and reflecting on the meaning of the learning and experience.

The third and final part of the lesson planning process is planning the learning experiences and instruction. This seems odd to be the final step, but it makes sense. Many people see a really cool activity and want to incorporate it into the classroom in some fashion, and by doing this they create a lesson for that activity, not a meaningful activity for the lesson.

Keep in mind that while we lesson plan, we must first identify the destination before we attempt to select the route we will drive to get there.

2) What are the similarities between Significant Learning; Understanding by Design and the Universal Design for Learning?

The Universal Design for Learning is geared toward developing significant learning for unique learners to address the what, how, and why of the content they are learning. 

Understanding by Design is a three-step, backward design process which teachers utilize to develop significant learning. 

The two are different but not mutually exclusive. In fact, they overlap quite a bit and must both be used to design courses, units, and lessons for significant learning.

3) How you will incorporate the three pillars of Universal Design for Learning: multiple means of representation, multiple means of action and expression, and multiple means of engagement?

Multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement must be incorporated in your planning process. By incorporating these three pillars we break down barriers.

Incorporating multiple means of representation can happen in several ways. A specific example can include first, learning about a ruminant digestive system by discussing the function of each stomach, then looking at imagines of each stomach and inspecting their surface structures to correlate with their functions. In addition to pictures and discussion a teacher can incorporate a video, visit a farm with a cannulated cow, or ask a butcher for the digestive organs from ruminant animals. Through out the learning process students should be asked to recall vocabulary and functions for the various ruminant digestive parts. 

Multiple means of action and expression can be incorporated into lessons and plans in several ways, also. We aspire to allow students to choose from multiple options to express what they know and their levels of proficiency. This can look like allowing them to design a project to display their knowledge in a summative assessment, or simply asking a student open ended questions.

Multiple means of engagement is the most challenging pillar for me to comprehend how to incorporate. I understand that each student is unique and won't be intrinsically motivated to explore each topic or activity. Incorporating multiple means of engagement would mean allowing them more freedom to explore specific parts of a topic, once the basic knowledge and vocabulary have been captured. A specific example could look like a student learning the basic content of greenhouse management, but investigating the economic impacts of aphids in a greenhouse because economics and business models fire up that specific student. 

4) What is Scaffolding?

In education scaffolding means giving the students the support they need, in a positive interaction between the teacher and the student, to learn and utilize information you have given them. Scaffolding is how teachers get students to stretch, and reach the zone of proximal development.

We achieve scaffolding in a few steps. First, the teacher begins by teaching at a level the students can understand. Then, the teacher poses a problem out-loud of the students to process. Following the problem the teacher proposes a solution using action, images, and language.

This process is repeated and students are given positive reinforcement, regardless of their answer, to encourage participation. Through this repetition the students will grasp the new concepts, via scaffolding.