Krista, Cows, and Ag Ed

What Did We Do?          For lab this past week, we learned about how to create an interest approach that appeals to Lancelot's twelve basic tenets of interest: 5 of which are primary, and the other 7 are secondary. After being able to identify these principles, we then had to apply them into a lesson plan with a creative interest approach.  How Does it Relate to What I Know About Teaching and Learning?          I know that in order for high school students to pay attention to the content they were about to learn, they first have to become interested. That's up to us, as teachers, to capture their interest and maintain it throughout the lesson. Students have short attention spans (I know I did... and still do...) so gaining their interest dramatically helps them stay engaged in the content and want to learn.    My interest approach for small animal digestion and absorption: the legendary video How Animals Eat Their Food fr...

 1st Unit Plan in the Books!          At the end of week 4, we are officially turning in our very first unit plans. In order to make sure that these unit plans were the best they could be, we engaged in two peer-review processes. We each reviewed two of our cohort members' unit plans while two members reviewed our unit plans. In between reviewers, we were able to revise our plans in order to make them the best we could. Ah-ha Moments          I definitely had a few instances that almost felt like a "slap in the face". Simple ones like organizational pieces where I had two separate tables: one for materials, and one for lesson titles and objectives. A cohort member of mine mentioned that I could combine the two tables to maximize the space in my unit plan. That is something that I will definitely be trying in my future unit plans.           Another cohort member mentioned a suggestion about my unit ratio...

A Change of Scenery           This week for our 412 lab we did things a little differently. We visited the Palmer Museum of Art, which is Penn State's own art museum right on campus! Myself and a number of my classmates had never been inside the museum before, so it was super cool to be able to finally go inside and observe the pieces that the university has acquired.  Why an Art Museum...?          I'm sure you're curious why a bunch of pre-service ag teachers were having class in an art museum. I'm not gonna lie- I wondered the same thing at first. I really think it helped me not only understand the connection between art and agriculture, but also get to know my cohort members a little better. The members of my lab group had an awesome time interpreting art pieces together.          During our tour, we looked at two pieces together as a group and were able to observe 3 different teaching styles....

First Day of School?          This week, #psuaged23 was tasked with creating a lesson plan for the first day of school. I was a little nervous, but I ended up having a lot of fun creating it! I was able to include some of my personality throughout my lesson plan- especially my interest approach.           After we created our lesson plans, we taught a 10 minute snippet in our lab groups. This activity related to what I already knew about teaching and learning especially through the activities that we did and the environment that we created. Many of us did fun introductory activities to start the class, then dove into classroom expectations. Both of which I remember my own teachers doing from elementary school clear through college.           I was able to learn a lot from completing this experience. One of the key things that I learned is that it is important to keep students engaged- especially for fir...