Krista, Cows, and Ag Ed

           In mid November, two of my cohort members, Jacob and Anna, and myself were fortunate enough to teach a three day mini unit at Greenwood High School with the legendary Mrs. Krista Pontius (KP). I loved that KP is also a dairy girl- even though she's not a fan of the Jerseys like I am. For my mini unit, I taught 3 lessons on Dairy Sustainability.  Myself, Jacob, and Anna on our first day teaching!          Not only was this was a super cool experience because we were able to teach for 3 days, but we also got to observe rockstar ag teachers and check out how they run their classroom. One of my favorite things that I learned from watching KP was her checks for understandings that she used. Before she allowed students to break out and complete an activity or assignment, she says, "ask me two questions before we begin."          I really like this because you are ultimately having the students...

           Gearing down to just about a month until PSUAgEd23 begins our student teaching internship! Prior to this experience, we were tasked with creating a Life Knowledge lesson to teach at our cooperating center. I chose to use the lesson on character and integrity from National FFA. I taught about the importances and benefits of both character and integrity, and learners broke into groups to share an "eye-witness news moment."             I really wanted to start my teaching out at Pequea Valley teaching about character and integrity because that is something that I really value in the classroom. I had a lot of fun finally teaching a lesson at PV! The students started out pretty quiet, but got much more involved when there was an active discussion. The also really seemed to enjoy the eye-witness news moment and had a lot of fun being creative with that task.           I was able to l...

         On Friday, my cohort, current teachers, and I had the opportunity to attend the Agriculture Inquiry Institute. We were tasked with completing several inquiry-based lessons.           Inquiry Based Learning is a learning process that engages students and encourages learners to make connections through exploration and high-level thinking and reflection. I know that learning requires higher-level thinking and reflection, so when I teach, I should encourage them to think for themselves. One of the things I really liked and plan on implementing in my classroom is having the students write their methods and procedures for experiments.                    I also learned that there are different levels on inquiry. At the inquiry institute, we were able to decipher the level of inquiry that an activity was. I struggled with figuring out how to implement inquiry into my...