#AEE412 1st Day Lab

It's the first day of school. The Goal: teach the first 10 minutes of your "first day" lesson plan. This lab was beneficial in multiple ways. First, I got to think through what would be a good way to establish classroom procedures right away, create a welcoming environment, etc. Second, I had the chance to teach for 10 minutes and practice classroom management skills with my cohort members who had transformed into students with various personalities. After watching my video, here is one thing I did well and one thing I can improve on for next time!

Gems: things that went well with my lesson.

Going over objectives and having them written on the wall/board: 

I believe it's important to go over your objectives for each lesson. This all goes back to the first domain of teaching and learning: Organization and Structure of Content Matter. Students learn better when they are aware of the structure of the content as well as see how everything their learning contributes to the end goals. Going over the objectives also helps you as a teacher remain business-like and on task by reminding yourself of what you want your students to be accomplishing during the class.

Opps: Opportunities for improvement in future lessons.

Giving clear directions and ensuring students are paying attention/understand: 

I realized while I was watching my video that students asked me to repeat directions and/or had questions about what I just asked them to do. This means that either I'm not giving clear directions and/or I did not have their attention. So, going forward I want to make sure I thoroughly plan how I want to give directions and then also make sure I ask my students to repeat back the directions after I give them. That will hopefully help my directions be more clear and ensure that students were paying attention.


I'm looking forward to practicing more during next week's lab on interest approaches! Thanks for following my blog, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

#AEE412 Weekly Investment 3

Objectives are CRUCIAL.

Objectives (along with assessments) are the guiding force of instruction. Newcomb et al. states, "in writing instructional objectives, teachers make definite decisions about the content of the problem area. The force themselves to establish parameters that in turn help define and limit the scope and content of the problem area. ... they provide a basis for evaluation" (pg. 91). We learned this week that your objectives and your unit assessments should influence each other. This makes sense because like I said in last week's blog post - begin with the end in mind and everything needs to connect. I found it interesting to learn about the three domains of learning that objectives can fall into.

1. Cognitive - objectives that deal with the acquisition of facts, knowledge, information, or concepts.
2. Psychomotor - objectives that deal with using the mind in combination with motor skills.
3. Affective - objectives that have to do with attitudes, values, aesthetics, and appreciation.

I had never heard of affective objectives before, and found it to be a very interesting concept. My methods book (Newcomb et al., 2004) stated that the most difficult area of objectives to include are affective. I believe this, but after reading some examples and learning what they are I would argue that they, too, are very important to include. I think one of the main purposes of education is to grow up leaders and people with good morals and values, so including affective objectives is one way to work on this. I can definitely see myself including some affective objectives into the Biotechnology & Food Science class that I get to teach in the spring!

Interest Approach - Say What?!

Before this fall, I was always confused about what an interest approach was and why they were important. Over the past couple of weeks I've begun to get a better sense about what interest approaches are all about. Newcomb et al. discusses a variety of ways to go about creating a desire in students to know more about a topic. I think that developing interest approaches based on students' SAE projects is a neat idea. If students can personally connect with the interest approach the WHY of the lesson will be so much clearer.

However, in a research article I found concerning interest approaches in Agricultural Education, the researchers found that the use of an interest approach at the beginning of a lesson had no effect on the students knowledge/learning or student attitudes. But, the data did show that student engagement increased with the use of an interest approach. They did state that more data needs to be collected to further analyze the results of the study. I would be interested to hear what other ag teachers think about interest approaches!

References:

Johnston, T. L., Roberts, T. G. (2011). The Effect of an Interest Approach on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Engagement of High School Agricultural Science Students. Journal of Agricultural Education, 52(1), 143-154. Retrieved from http://www.jae-online.org/attachments/article/1537/52.1.143.Johnston.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.