Micro-Teaching at Greenwood

         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 immediately reflect on the instructions and clarify anything that they are unsure of. I used this technique in my Life Knowledge lesson. The learners told me that they didn't have questions, then 2 minutes later (after we started the activity), someone had a question. 

        I was also reminded the importance of timing in the classroom. We ran out of time on the first day while they were completing their ticket out the door (sharing their favorite breed that they learned that day). We were able to carry it into the next day and I was able to learn from that mistake and made pretty good time the next two lessons. We even had time to showcase our juggling skills!

        One thing that KP and Mr. Clark did at Greenwood is eat lunch without doing any work. This was hard for me because I really wanted to continue working throughout the day, but I really valued that time that we designated to take a break and not do any work. I will plan on practicing this during my student teaching internship.

        This experience was great for me to apply as an agriscience educator because I can take everything that I did and learned from this experience and apply it directly to my experience as a student teacher next spring. 









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