Student Teaching Week 13!

This past week I finished up my 13th week of student teaching. It was a busy week! The prior week was the end of the marking period, so I spent a good portion of this week making sure all of the grades were up to date and working with students who needed to complete make-up work. Thursday was the county FFA volleyball tournament, and a good time was had by all! Here are some more highlights from this week:

1. Grades matter, but student learning is most important.

The end of the marking period caused me to take some time and reflect on my philosophy of grading and how to ensure students are continually improving. I have a few students who are absent from school the majority of the time, and their grades show it. I try to get them to come down for homeroom so I can help them catch up, but if they're not in school they also aren't available to come down for homeroom. These next two weeks I'm hopeful that I can work with these students on the current material we're learning to make sure they don't get behind in the 4th marking period. I think it would be good to have a talk with these students about growth mindsets and how grades don't define you as a person, but instead just show that there's always room for improvement. Another resource I plan to utilize better are the students' IEP resource persons by having them help me modify assessments and help students complete make-up work.

2. Try new learning activities with your students because even if they don't go absolutely perfect, they will still learn. 

This week in Biotech our regular soybean and GMO soybean plants were ready for our experiment. Students followed a procedure to extract DNA from both plants, use PCR to amplify the DNA segment, and run a gel electrophoresis to compare the DNA. It was a learning experience for all of us! It didn't go perfectly, but students gained valuable lab skills (for example, I didn't learn how to use a micropipette until college, so I think it's awesome these students already know how!!) and the importance of reading the procedure when completing a project/task. Students also learned about DNA, and how biotechnology is used in agriculture. I'm looking forward to next week when students will be using procedures they created to make biofuels (methane, biodiesel, and ethanol to name a few)!!

Preparing their soybean DNA for the PCR machine!

Thanks for following me along on my #TeachAg journey! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

#AEE412 Weekly Investment: Individualized Teaching Techniques

Supervised Study, Experiments, Notebooks, Oh My!

Just like there are many types of group teaching techniques, there are also quite a few options when it comes to individualized teaching techniques. Having this framework makes it really nice to learn all of the different teaching techniques, but I've noticed that when it actually comes to using them you often combine techniques into one. Personally, I like the idea of using student notebooks as an individualized teaching technique. In my high school biology class, we used interactive notebooks, which I enjoyed for the most part. They were a nice tool to capture information and study from. As the teacher, you could plan out exactly how students will fill in the information, or you could give students choice in how they capture what they are learning. By allowing students to choose, they are able to capture the same information in a way that makes sense to them (ex. pictures, writing, diagram), which ties back to the Multiple Intelligences Theory. 

Have you ever used Interactive Notebooks? What were the pros/cons? Do you use another similar technique that you like better? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Differentiated Instruction is different than Individualized Instruction.

According to EduGains (2015), Differentiated Instruction is defined as "effective instruction that is responsive to students' readiness, interests, and learning preferences." There are several essentials of differentiated instruction including: 

• Teachers use a repertoire of instructional and assessment strategies to meet the needs of different learners.
• All differentiated instruction activities are equally engaging and respectful and take approximately the same amount of time.
• Unless students are on an IEP, all differentiated instruction is based on the same curriculum expectations and all students have opportunities to achieve the same high standards of performance.

This is different from individualized instruction, which is defined as "Instruction calibrated to meet the unique pace of various students" (Basye, 2016). In short, the academic goals for a group of students are the same, but individual students can progress through the curriculum at their own pace according to their learning needs. Maybe I just need to learn more about individualized instruction, but it seems like that would be very challenging to use in your classroom. And yet, I think that many students (including myself) would have benefitted from that in high school. Differentiated instruction is a lot of what we have already been learning about, providing variability throughout your lessons so that each student receives instruction that matches their learning needs/style.

What have your experiences been like with differentiated and/or individualized instruction? What are the benefits/challenges in your opinion? Any tips/tricks you'd like to share?

Thanks for reading!

References

Basye, Dale. (2016). Personalized vs. Differentiated vs. Individualized Learning. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articledetail?articleid=124

EduGains. (2015). Reach every student through differentiated instruction. Retrieved from http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesDI/Brochures/DIBrochureOct08.pdf

Newcomb, L.H., McCracken, J.D., Warmbrod, J.R., & Whittington, M.S. (1993). Methods of teaching agriculture. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.