Unit plans.... First ever!

Wow! Writing a unit plan take time, thinking, and patience. Writing my first unit plan was like getting slapped in the face with reality. I do not mean that in a negative way but by saying reality is setting in more and more with each step we take into student teaching. Sitting at my computer to write this unit plan was stressful but well worth it. It was a lot to take in and think about because it seems so far away but in the end its at the snap of a finger.

This unit plan came with positives and negatives. This unit plan was easy in the essence of I knew what my lesson titles were and what I wanted to do with them. The parts I found the most stressful was first off the lay out. I tried and tried, plus rearranged, deleted, and so on. I talked to a girl in the cohort and had her send me her lay out. What can I say, she saved me from throwing my computer out the window. The second was standards just because its hard to relate to standards in the non agricultural area that you have to read through and find the perfect matches.

One item that went into my lesson plan with a huge post it note reading "I have no idea" was the SLO. After skyping in with Neil and Diane I started filling out the SLO and feel pretty good about it but I guess time will tell.

From my peer feedback I have made changes which include: Adding more standards both in PA and agricultural ones, I added one to two more objectives per unit, and added overall more clarity through out m y unit plan.

weekly writing

Going through high school at any age the best days are field trip days. Even if you knew the day was going to be boring, it was a day out of the classroom. To add up the number of field trips I have been on I would need more than my fingers and toes. I have to say though, some field trips are more memorable than others. The ones that I got something out of it stick in my head compared to those like the theater were I was bored out of my mind.

Field trips can be a crucial part of the learning environment if played out right. Field trips need to have meaning and planning behind them. They need to be relevant to what the teachers are learning or going to learn (could be a unit interest approach if planned right). Field trips for one need to be engaging that way students are not off in la la land thinking about what they are having for dinner.

Along with field trips playing a role in the learning process, questions can give you the big picture of the learning, They can either tell you what a student does or does not know. They can also tell you where you stand as teacher and where you need to go next. This reading relates so well to 412 instruction with lesson planning and coming up with those transitional questions that make the students at a higher level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IvQOJrN4mU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vboA-n0b7ls

Interest Approach Lab

For my interest approach lab in 412 I chose to use my SAE... What is it? lesson plan. For this lesson I hid index cards around the room, each with a different direction. Some said become this letter "s, a, or e", where some said when called on act a specific idea such as farmer, an experiment, showman, and the list could go on and on. I considered this a pictionary/charades interest approach. Once they acted or drew out the idea given to them students had to relate it to SAE. If they were given a letter they were instructed to find a spot in the room and become that letter. The students not being letter has to determine which letter they were and than decide what they stood for.

I think my interest approach went well. Some comments were the directions were not super clear where others said it was easy to follow. I think it was a good way to get students up and moving and involved first thing for the class. For future reference when I have more than 6 students I can have more students act out more things but not much you can do with six students which is an example if never knowing how many will be in your class and you need to be able to be flexible with that.

First Day of School

As a student teach to be in the spring with hopes og graduating with my teaching certification I know that the "First day of school" is going to be here sooner than I know it. I do believe that as a teacher on the first day you need to set the floor for your rules, expectations, procedures, and consequences. I know teachers all have different ways of doing it and going about it. I do not want to be one of those teachers who every one feels like yells and is mean. I want them to respect me and what I put fourth but at the same time do not want to have to raise my voice or anything like that. Is that wrong to feel that way?

After watching my First Day of School video from lab I noticed a few things. For one I know and have known I use my hands to talk every second of the day. In this video however with the microphone I realized I like put my hands together a lot. Another thing is where do you draw the line for students like the complainer role Jenna was playing where they give their whole life story behind every question. How do you do it with out being rude but also not letting them control the classroom.

From my peer feed back I was told I teach like in an  elementary when it comes to my disciplinary. This is going to be a weakness that I need to work on for the fact that as a child yeah I got in trouble but harsh punishment was not a thing because my mom was abused as a child by a family member at the time so discipline was a casual thing in my house but trust me I knew right from wrong. Also, I know as a person that I need to be aggressive with it but need to learn to find that line because I do have very slight anger and have come along with working on that.

By giving the lesson though I realized I need to revise some of my procedures and consequences due to ease of explaining and ones that fit into the real world for instance the my time. It makes sense to me but once trying to explain it does not fit reality.

Who is Megan Keller

If you have read my blog you know I am a Senior at Penn State University and will be student teaching in the spring at Manheim Central in Lancaster County, PA. Here is a little more about me and what makes me, ME!

I was born in Lancaster County where I was the prissy figure skater, competitive cheerleader, and swimmer. My family decided to move to Fulton County when I was ten which is where I found me. My identity is made up of so many things like: Agriculture, caring, #stockshowlife, loud, outgoing, country girl, female, family oriented, hardworking, adventurous, little sister, business/partner owner, and above all I have the blood of a truly amazing person my grandma who is know longer with us today which means I am STRONG in many ways.

http://lns5121.wix.com/lindseysmith#!untitled/zoom/c380/image14m4

This picture and video clip represents my #stockshowlife, agriculture, and country girl parts.

This picture represents my little sister and family oriented parts. This was my junior year of high school before going into prom. Got to have the sibling pictures (Not a single normal one for the two of us)

This is my family's business logo. I am partners with my father where we both have does of our own, partnered on some, and we share bucks. He does the day to day operations considering I am away at school and I do all the communications with emails, advertisement, and photographing.

#MeganKeller, #Multicultural_Moment, #Who_I_Am

Teaching groups of students

Becoming an agricultural teacher is a thrill but a fear all in one. You have no idea what types of students you will have or how each individual learns to be most effective to them. Knowing the seven group teaching techniques which include: lecture, discussion, demonstrations, field trips, role-play, resource people, and cooperative learning, will help me as a teacher to better understand how students learn and how to incorporation as many styles as possible.

I know being that being an agricultural teacher means having to teach almost anything and everything. Just to be clear I do not know everything but a group teaching technique that will help me on this matter is resource people. When it comes to a subject I am not familiar with or have little experience for example, wildlife, I can call up the game commission and have them come in and help me teach a lesson on furs and tracking.

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsgwcl

Setting the "Hook"

Have you ever walked into a classroom were something caught your eye immediately? Growing up in small town and going to a small school getting this eye catcher was hit and miss but mostly miss. However, coming to Penn State University and being an agricultural major you get to see more of the one on one instruction and your instructors like to have fun. The class that mostly sticks in my mind was AEE 297 with Dr. Ewing where he gave this speech on needing desserts for his kids for the school the next day. We had pudding, pretzels, chocolate chips, graham crackers, and a few others. Come to figure out we were learning about aggregates for concrete and masonry.



As an educator I want to create these "hooks" to introduce units and lessons to my classes. These interest approaches are what intrigue the minds of students and make them want to learn more. While planning units I need to always keep this in mind when deciding the unit objectives and the lesson objective and what can I do to make them engaged but learn at the same time.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TznYeyfwWZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCV0qEQN4WI

How do I design Effective Instruction?

Becoming a student teacher is a feeling of many feelings. Its sophomore year and your like two years down two to go. Senior summer hits and your filled with excitement, fear, anticipation, and many more. One thought that is always running through you head is how am I going to be able to design lesson plans to be most effective to each and every student.

After reading this weeks weekly reading and doing the reading reflection I got a better understanding of what needs to be in a lesson plan and some of how to approach it. Something that some teachers do not understand is that every student learns differently. I am sure that your best friend did not learn the same way as you going through school on all topics.

Scaffolding is one of those techniques that was common sense but I never knew the correct term for it. From personal experience I want the extra explanation and demonstration in order to learn new tasks that are also difficult. Although this teaching method seems like common sense that does not mean you know how to incorporate it to make it effective in use. Through the reading today that all became a little more clear. I hope that when developing lesson plans this all comes together and I can show what I have learned on paper and in the classroom.

https://www.powayusd.com/depts/pss/ppap/PDFs/teach_stand.pdf

RTL Lab

Its the first day of class going into your senior year and you have not prepared lessons, learned how to even develop amazing lesson plans and BOOM you get hit with a lesson plan and have to teach it next class! These are examples of the completely horrifying but incredible experiences AEE 412 is throwing at us. #psuaged15

As we pulled out  random lesson plans from a folder not knowing what your going to get all you keep thinking to yourself is what will I get. Well I was the fortunate one to pick juggling. Of all things Juggling!!!

So for the next two nights I tried teaching myself how to juggle and lets just say that was not a success. Keeping this in mind I went into the lab to teach others how to juggle let alone I could not do it myself. This was frustrating because how can I expect students to do or learn what I am teaching if I can not do it myself. If I was the student I would be like this teacher point blank does not know what she is doing. It makes you feel the size of an ant in a world the size of ours.

From watching my video I did learn that I need to have more positive encouragement and reinforcement. I know not every lesson is going to be amazing but it is something to strive for. I also came to the conclusion that if there is ever a lesson or topic that I need to teach and am unfamiliar with it that one I need to really dig deep into the content and or cal in a guest to lend a hand.

Methods of teaching #1

First off as many of those who know me know I am not much of a reader. I managed through high school by picking books that just so happened to have a movie with them. With that said college has been a challenge considering these texts do not have movies. Readings for the week literally take me all week to get through since reading is a tough area for me with my comprehension issues.

I was quite surprised though, this first weeks reading was informative but in a different way for me at least. By this I mean that even though a lot of it was common sense or already a known factor it was a reinforcement for me as a teacher candidate. Most of what stuck out to me was texts from Newcomb in the first two chapters.

The first thing that really stood out to me that hit hard was in the first chapter where it talked about study skills. One reason for this is because high school to me was a piece of cake, I never did homework if it was not graded, studying "what's that?", and tests were easy. So going to my first college course freshman year as I sat in Bio 110 in shock that overwhelming feeling comes over you like what am I going to do. Than you have those smarty pants kids who are like do we need to know this this and this and the instructor is like no this is basic biology. I am still sitting there in shock. Moral to the story is I was never challenged enough to learn how to study nor was taught how to study in a productive way and still have trouble. For me as a teacher and going through this first hand I want to be that teacher that prepares them for the life outside of high school know matter what path they choose to take.

When reading through chapter 2 and going through all the principles I related to number twelve, students learn what they practice. Considering my lack of study skills and all that I was a student where telling me what to do was like talking to a brick wall. Now if we talked while physically doing the task at hand I would pick it up like nothing. I am a firm believer in hands on because that is the true test to learning or mastering it. Many can read and know it in their head for a written exam but can they physically do what they know. This is where for me SAE plays an enormous part in the learning process in the agricultural education program.