Virtual Mentor Exploration #2

"What strategies or resources do you use to help your class/program be responsive to cultural diversity and English Language Learners?"

The FFA and agriculture education have had a consistent struggle with achieving cultural diversity in their classrooms and chapters. Ultimately your program should reflect the community which you live in, and my awesome virtual mentorship team provided some feedback for me to look into when achieving cultural diversity in my classroom and accommodating ELL students. 

Big Take Aways:

1. Providing Spanish FFA Documents such as the manual and other resources to Spanish speaking students often makes them feel included.
2. Attending Professional Development events regarding ELL and Cultural Diversity is valuable.
3. The "We Are FFA" and "Somos FFA" movements were apart of a large launch for National FFA to create more diverse resources for students. 
4. Cultural Diversity and Acceptance of ELL students is ultimately up to the leadership, membership, advisors, chapters, and supporters.

After the conversations I had with my mentorship team, I am excited to start including culturally diverse members into my program!

PS: MY MENTORSHIP TEAM IS AWESOME!

Weekly Investment #8

How do Teachers assess and evaluate?

Assessments and Evaluations of learning are a critical component for teachers to have in their classrooms. Not only is this tool for teachers to evidence learning in their classroom for reporting, but it is a way to gauge if your students truly accomplished the objectives set forth in your lessons. 

These assessments are given in two ways. One way is formative assessments, which are "temperature checks" throughout the lesson and learning process to gauge your students progress in learning. Another method is summative assessments, which are completed with a pre- and post-assessments before and after a lesson, unit, or course. 

These two methods are to be used with every lesson, unit and course your teach consistently. One cannot fully replace the other, because they serve very different tasks. 

How can I assess students in a laboratory?

Tests can be hard to implement for laboratory/shop work in agriculture. One of our readings had great examples of various methods of mapping out concepts learned that foster student creativity while assessing their learning. 

 

                           Brace Map                                                          Concept Map

 

                              Flow Chart                                                      Student Portfolio

Maintaining Clarity in Assessments:

As you well know, a critical part of assessments and evaluations is clarity. This comes in the form of rubrics. Ideally, the rubric would be given with the instructions for the assignment and would have the following characteristics:

• A list of criteria for the assessment
• A point value for each criteria for students to identify key components of the assignment
• Enough freedom to foster student autonomy or creativity
• A matrix which correlates students' actions to a specific point value.

FEEDBACK WANTED:

How can teachers incorporate peer-review ans self-graded assessments into our evaluation process without introducing social bias?

Reflection on the Problem Solving Lab

Problem Solving Instruction

BeMy goals and aspirations for problem solving instruction were somewhat met. I had successfully asked an mildly interesting question which posed a problem for my students. Although my lesson quickly fell apart for several reasons.

1. The lesson was following the unit on "Tragedy of the Commons" and was fairly content heavy. Therefore, my lab-mates that were unfamiliar with the tragedy could not interact with the lesson the way a student would if they had been in class for the unit.
2. I had wrongly thought I needed to show the resolution to the problem in my 20 minute Edthena video; Therefore I cut a large chunk of problem solving time out. THIS WAS SO WRONG.
3. My students lost the original big picture problem about half way through my lesson because I have been asking several smaller questions that were causing them to think a bit off track.

Giving myself some credit, even though I think I failed:

1. I understand, the lesson would have gone better with students that had content knowledge.
2. I understand, I do not need to show a resolution within 20 minutes of posing the problem.
3. I understand, other questions that you stumble upon can be welcomed as long as the provoke thought and you can still steer back to the original problem.
4. Writing the original, big-picture problem on a board for students to reference would help with clarity. (BECOV IS LIFE)
5. I am handling student discipline issues well in class, I had a student make a rude comment and quickly and simply nipped the problem without drawing extra attention from other students. This allowed me to defend the student being picked on and demonstrate expectations and consequences in class. 

In Summary:

Problem-solving instruction is tricky, but is one of the best ways to get students engaged and thinking. By posing a problem, we easily identify the "why" in student learning. 

I realize I would nail all my labs on the first try, I know where I messed up and I know where I can fix these mistakes. I look forward to practicing and getting better at problem solving instruction!

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.