Virtual Exploration # 3

Prompt Three

What are the best tips/resources you would provide to a new teacher regarding special needs accommodations?

Special education is an area that I am not too familiar with. This prompt definitely has helped give me some tips and advice from my mentoring team. One of the biggest things you can do is to stay in the loop.  Whenever you have the chance, become familiar with student's IEP to help accommodate them. At first, it can be overwhelming to read and understand, but they are essential to the student's education.


Another tip I was told is that you should try to attend an IEP meeting to provide you with more insight on the student and to work with the special education teachers to help with accommodations and adaptations.

After talking with my mentoring team, this has given me confidence in working with students with IEP to maximize their education.

Micro-teaching

For my microteaching, I spent my time at State High with Mrs. Campbell. The class I taught was her Exploration Agriculture Class that was made up of freshmen. Mrs. Campbell class was CASE class, so I was assigned the topics of lab safety, scientific method, and lab equipment. The Case curriculum helped give me a framework of what to cover, but I ended up adding a lot of my own information to the class. The class had nine students in it, so it was relatively small. I liked the small class because I was able to spend time working with each of the students.

My first day I covered lab safety and procedures it went awesome! I had my lesson well planned out, but after doing my interest approach, I decided to change my first activity. Initially, I was going to have the students write down on guided notes But after observing them with the interest approach, I decided to have them make a lab safety notebook out of construction paper. After going each of the rules, they would draw a symbol to remember the rules. They loved doing it, and it worked out well!

My second day of student teaching we covered the scientific method. The students had to come up with a hypothesis of why they thought a box was ringing. This activity was only supposed to take 10 minutes, but the students were coming up with great explanations and experiments, so I decided to extend this part. By the end, students were able to prove why the box was ringing along using the scientific method.

Overall the microteaching was great! An area that I need to improve is being more evident when it comes to giving instructions. I re-watched my video, and that was the biggest thing that jumped out! This experiences defiantly has me excited about student teaching!

Ag Mechanic Demo

For the agricultural mechanics demonstration, I chose to cable ripping.  I will be teaching electricity in my Intro to Ag Mech class this spring, so I thought it would be a perfect demo. The format I used was Teacher Say & Teacher Does, Teacher Say & Student Does, Student Say & Student Says.

The steps that I followed were:
1. Positioning the cable, so the flat side is down, and the rounded side is up.
2. Place the cable into the cable ripper and having the tooth of the ripper on the flat side of the cable.
3. Firmly pressed down on the ripper so it punctures the cable
4. Pull back and remove the sheath to exposes the wires.

This is a basic demonstration, but an area where students may struggle with is positioning the cable correctly. If the cable position incorrectly, it won't cut it. Other than that students should be successful when doing this activity.

Life Knowledge Day

On November 19th I had my life knowledge lesson at Pequea Valley High School! I taught the 2nd-period Food Science Class on discovering the world of agriculture. This lesson helped students learn the important role agriculture plays around the world. 

For the most part, the class was well behaved, besides some minor issue of talking with friends and staying on task. It was easy for students to talk to friends because they were in groups, but one way I used to solve that was using proximity with them. That seemed to work well. I would also ask them why they would draw something and have them expand their idea this helped with staying on track. 

The structure of the lesson was pretty simple. The original lesson plan was kind of boring, so I adapted the plan and made it more centered around Food Science because that's what they were learning. 

Overall, the lesson went well! Areas that I would approve is being more clear with instructions some moments students were confused, so it took up time to go over instructions again. I think this was a great experience for me to build up my confidence with students and leading a class!

Week 14 Investment

How does a professional learning network impact our teaching practice?

Last week the PSUAgEd19 cohort attended the National Association for Agriculture Educators Conference for in San Antonio Texas! Our week was full of workshops and sessions centered around student engagement, inclusiveness, tips and tricks for teaching, and professional development. All helping to advance agriculture education!

Since we are pre-service teachers, we had the opportunity to attend the Future Agriscience Teacher Synopsis (FAST). During this programs, we were able to ask questions, to a panel of experienced teachers, participate in inquiry-based workshops, and fill out tools box with tons of resources. One workshop I really enjoyed was put on by two advisors from the Galt chapter in California. Their workshop taught us how to make our program an inclusive program. Where all types of students are welcome no matter their, race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status.

Another workshop I attended was including foldable in classroom instructions. This by far was one of my favorite workshops I attended! Before I was struggling with ideas on how to make genetics more interactive for my students.  I'll be teaching one week of genetics in my reproduction unit, so this workshop was beneficial!

Having a professional learning network and development events are wicked important when it comes to expanding our teaching practice.  At the conference, I was able to talk to a ton of current ag teachers and build a relationship with them. Relationships I can count on in the future when I have a question on how to do something in my program. Also, I was able to see and gain teaching tips that I can implement in my classroom! Overall, this was a great week!
I am looking forward to using the skills and resources gain in student teaching!