Banquet Week

This week was banquet week so for those of you who have been through this either as an officer or a teacher you can probably understand all the feelings and emotions that you go through in just one week. Between getting the slide show done, decoration bought, the script done, and the awards together, dinner menu, and tallying RSVP'S lets just say it has been one crazy week on top of teaching.

This week I am only teaching mechanics due to what is left in others I would not get through half of what needed to be done. I still wont finish out the electrical unit with the mechanics class but they will only be finishing their lamp projects and Mrs. Anderson and I have been co-teaching it that way we were both on the same page.

Next week I will still be working with the mechanics class and finishing up all other projects to bring with me to PSU. I am also going to get the opportunity to help with NOCTI which will be a great experience to see since even as an Ag student in high school I never had to take the test.

With that said once again it is back to prepping for banquet which is tonight!!! I could not be more proud of the officer team I have had the privilege to work with this year and am sure that the newly selected officers will do just the same.

https://storify.com/MeganLego/the-breakdown-of-student-teachingnew-story-1

Does learning style correlate with student engaement.

Coming up with a plan let alone an idea for my action research project was tough. I had one plan and once I taught my AgriEcology class for a week a new idea came and I went with it. This class is made up of 23 students and there is a lot of character in this class.

I planned my populations unit all on visual and hands on activities thinking it would be fun and they would like it better than lecture and boring stuff (at least I think that). Within the first couple days I was in the "I just want to hit my head off a desk" frustration mode. In the middle of activities they would sit down, talk, or throw objects across the room. What was I doing wrong?

I decided after the unit exam for populations I was going to make them take a learning style inventory and from those results tailor the energy unit. From my results I got a top two of auditory and tactile. To change my unit up I added in more lecture and group discussion and than some hands on activities.

To test them for the unit exams I set up the exams exactly the same with 10 true or false, 17 multiple choice, and 3 essays pick two. The exams were worth 74 points. I recorded all their scores for my data tables. After comparing the test results to one another the populations graph suggests that maybe they were bored due to prior knowledge on the concepts which could be what cause the lack of engagement. The energy unit exam scores came out with a more normal distribution bell curve compared to the highly shifted left bell curve with the populations exam.

When I first looked at the results I was like I failed. But, than I remembered that not every thing you do is going to turn out how you expected. I got mixed results where some proved part of my hypothesis (I propose that tailoring lessons to meet individual’s learning style (or modality) will increase engagement, decrease behavior issues, and improve unit test scores) and where others didn't.

Agriscience SAE Visit

As part of my Introduction to Agricultural Sciences class I made it a mandatory project for all students to complete and agriscience research project. For this visit I worked with Kole Hollinger who is a freshman. This student is an active member of the FFA and is very involved with volleyball. He is a twin and is a very kind and caring young man.

We did the visit at Manheim Central High School where his project is being housed in Mrs. Anderson's classroom. We did the visit during homeroom period. Prior to the visit I just made sure that he was okay with myself writing a write up on it.

The students agriscience research project is raising guppies and collecting data on their weight gain. There are two tanks, with four guppies per tank. One tank is getting fed just plain guppy feed where the other is getting that plus shrimp that are also being grown in a separate tank. Once a week he weighs the guppies on a balance and in a clear plastic cup. For weigh purposes he weighs out the water first and than adds the guppies and from there figures out the weight of the four guppies together.

We did discuss that there was a wrench thrown at him during this project. About four days after we got the guppies and had them in their right tanks and weights taken we came back to school on a Monday and were looking at the tanks. Wouldn't you know it, we had babies in one tank. So we got another tank to separate the babies out and two days later the other tank had babies. More for your money I guess or maybe turtle feed.

The record book Kole is using is AET. So he does not have to log on every single day to put in that he fed his guppies I gave him a note books where he logs in what he does daily and later he can go in and add it all to his AET record book.

It has been interesting to see the projects that my students have chosen and how they are turning out. There is never a dull moment with this class.

Visiting another student teacher

On April 2, 2015 I observed Ms. Jenna Moser who is student teaching at Shippensburg High School with Mrs. Biers.  She is currently teaching a full class schedule which includes Ag Mechanics, large animal, leadership, and horticulture.

I will be honest knowing Jenna and how she is the way she handles her students kind of shocked me. I did not expect to see her being rough and tough. It was very nice to see though. This really showed with her Ag mechanics class and the students respected her. This class is a 9 week class which ends on Tuesday so they were finishing up projects that were either woodworking or welding.

Second block the students presented their projects on sheep and goats. I actually, also presented to this class and talked to them about what I do and the goat world. These presentations ranged from both end of the spectrum. It was surprising that this large animal class, most of them have little to none experience with large animals. I spoke to them about my goat business and asking simple questions they had no idea.

It was interesting to see a leadership class that is for basically the officer team to work on FFA items. Today they were planning their lessons to teach to younger students and spent the rest of the period on banquet planning.

The last class of the day was horticulture, where they focused on flower arranging for this day. This is where Jenna really stood out. She became so full of life and excited, this was her element. She took so much pride in getting the flowers for the students and having them create an arrangement before they left for Easter break.

This observation was really neat to see how Jenna student teaching was going and how hers was different from mine. It was also interesting to compare Shippensburg Ag department and classrooms compared to Manheim Central. 

A Short but Productive Week

This week was a very short week with only three days of school due to Easter vacation. It is starting to really set in that my time at Manheim Central is almost over. It is even harder to believe the connections I have made with students in this short amount of time.

This was my last week with AgriEcology which was a blessing in disguise to say. This class gave me a run for my money no doubt. I tried lecturing, discussion, activities, and more and just nothing I did they seemed to get into. I based my action research off of this class. I did it on learning styles, so after the first unit I recorded their scores and had them do a learning style quiz. From there I recorded where the strong points were and it more or less fit how I taught the last unit. I based the energy unit off of this information and after their exam on Tuesday that will be set of exactly the same as the populations one. After all this is done I can put my action research poster together.

As for next week, I will teach my last week of Intro to Ag before Mrs. Anderson takes it over again. Mrs. Anderson and I are going to co-teach the electric unit because she got some awesome new technology through a grant and has never used any of it herself so we are going to go at this together and see what we can do.

I also have to keep trucking on banquet planning. I got the proficiency awards picked out, need the certificates made and then that part is done. I have to get the slide show presentation done where this year I am adding in senior fair wells. I have been helping the officer in charge of decorations plan what we want and how we are going to do it. 

New and Beginning Teacher Meeting

I attended a new and beginning teacher meeting at Shady Maple, the best food place ever, on March 25, 2015. Going to it the only thing I knew was to bring an activity to share and there would be awesome food.

I was not sure how the activity thing would work. I must say though that having every teacher and student teacher bring an activity to share was an excellent idea. Not every activity might have pertained to you but it was neat hearing what everyone brought.

This activity was a great way to share resources and bring new ideas to your classroom. It also sparked ideas like I could do this activity but change this to fit what I am teaching.

Another neat thing about the meeting was answering the four questions and hearing some of the answers especially about that do you wish you would have know at first and little things like that. However, I feel that the activity/lesson sharing should be happening more often because that is always a great resource and connection for Ag teachers.

When the path ahead turns the wrong way

Classes this week went great from working on labs and finishing projects.

This week I took my AgriEcology class out fish stocking for the field experience for my community based unit of instruction on populations. Out of 24 students only 7 went because of either bad grades or just did not want to go.

Being none of us have ever helped with stocking before it was unsure what to expect. Were we the only ones helping? How would this whole day pan out? When we arrived there were about twenty to thirty others there to help. They ranged from older gentlemen who were probably retired and this is something they looked forward to, to dads bringing their young children.

We learned first thing that they do not tell you where the next stop is and well we got lost when we got stopped at a red light and lost sight of those in front of us. We finally made it back with the group. However, sometimes things do not go as planned and the unbelievable happens. You scratch the school van with students in it.

I never thought of how this process would go, even though it is not one my cooperating teacher or I wanted me to see it happened. (I was not the driver fyi) The school had to be called, cops called, administration had to come, every adult plus student had to give them their information, once we got back to the school every student in the van plus us had to get checked out by the school nurse, than you have to meet with the principle and all those and wait to see what the next step is.

The one awesome thing out of the day was meeting Mindy Fee who is one of their representatives while fish stocking.