Hay Bales and Teacher Tales

At Wellsboro, I taught in two animal science classes. I chose to teach my lessons on food labeling. This lesson was based around misleading labels in the food industry. The bell ringer I had for the class was to look up the label on their favorite food. I told them to hang onto their images while we watched a short spoof video on marketing where a quote the kids found interesting was, "all milk is the same but we will put on this "non gmo" sticker and confuse consumers!" We then used their previous image in our activity where they moved around the room based on if it was nutrition, nutrient content, health claims, or farm production label. We then defined each and went over examples. Their small group activity was using if then cards of a product label. They needed to discuss the marketing behind the product. They then had to race to find the "actually" cards. These had the truths of the product and label on it. I thought overall my lesson went very well...

I completed my micro teaching at Bald Eagle Area High School. The class I was teaching was a mixed aged of animal science. At the time, they were focusing on reproduction so that is the area that I was asked to teach around. Not knowing the students and what level they were at I decided to take a more unique approach and teach a lesson on animal reproduction success adaptations. My first day was a little rough as we had to get the background knowledge so most of the class was based on lecture. I definitely knew this would not be super exciting but I needed to make sure they had an understanding of our topic. I am glad I planned this day as the students did not have as much knowledge of this topic as I thought they would. The second day, we completed an activity. I broke the students into small groups where they rotated through stations working with their teams. Each station had a different animal and explanation and the students needed to identify which reproductive success adaptation ...

My lab this week was based off of inquiry based learning technique. This lab was very fun to create and complete but it was also quite challenging. Inquiry is all about knowing your students. You must know them to be able to challenge them and understand where they are at. It is also difficult to find a balance of helping your students but also allowing them to learn independence and have a say in their own learning. In my lab, I did a lesson that made the students be able to identify their apple. They did this activity 3 times. The first time the students were instructed to find their apple without any way to identify it. The second time they had to take notes, give them to their partner and then attempt to find their partners apple. The final time, they needed to be 100% sure it was there apple. They needed to do this by taking detailed notes, drawing pictures, and anything else they could think of. The point of this lab was to have the students figure out that being detailed and e...

For our assignment this week, we were instructed to research literacy strategies. There are so many out there that you could easily use a different one every time! Having so many different strategies for retaining reading is very important for students though. All students learn uniquely in their own ways. A strategy that works great for one student may be very ineffective for another. That is why it is necessary and extremely important to use variety in your lessons.  Some of the strategies I found that I would use in my classroom are:  activating prior knowledge context clues think aloud making predictions visualization graphic organizers Brainstorming Drawing Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes Mnemonic Devices Music, Rhythm, Rhyme, and Rap movement My favorite of these would be movement and visuals. Movement is very fun for students. For a specific word or topic they can create a movement or body symbol to help them remember and better understa...