Down to the Wire

I never thought that the end of this experience would come it seemed like student teaching was going to gon on forever and prolong my fear of graduating and becoming an adult; and then in the blink of an eye there are only 3 weeks left of it! I cannot believe it, finishing up these last 3 weeks of student teaching will be bitter sweet. I have grown very fond of my students, each one of them having taught me something different. I am most proud of the help that I gave to our 7th grade FFA Vice President. She was nominated to attend Jr. National Young Leaders Conference this summer. I was fortunate enough to attend the life changing National Young Leaders Conference when I was a Junior in high school and got a chance to explain some of the wonderful experiences that she will have during her trip. I really felt like I had that "ah ha" moment when she asked me if she could run some fundraising ideas by me, it made me feel so good knowing that I am helping her achieve something that she really wants to do.

As I reflect back on this week, I felt as if I have hit a rut. A rut where I am lecturing more and more. It is not something that I am happy about. I am not sure how I got to this point or what happened to my engaging hands on activities but they seemed to have disappeared from my creative imagination. I do not know if it is because the end is near or if I ran out of ideas (which is not likely!) I want to get back to that point where I was about 2 weeks ago. I am focusing really hard this upcoming week on getting back to that point.

Aside from my heavy lecturing my Ag 7 students learned about habitats and insects. I had them create a project on a habitat of their choice from the ones that we talked about in class. I told my students that they could pick any medium to portray their project as long as it encompassed the elements of the rubric. I was very surprised to see how awesome their projects came out. I even had one student create a shirt! During Ag 7 this week we also explored pheromones, insects, and an introduction to IPM.

In my CASE AFNR class we are working on creating scale drawing of a birdhouse for a native bird species in New Jersey. The students conducted their research and began drawing their designs. We also learned about bill of materials and project plans! Tapping into all the things that I learned in AEE 350 (glad we had to do that $15 project!) With my CASE classes I had a few classroom management issues this week. Students talking a lot and not paying attention. Proximity control was not working. This is definitely something that I want to work on this up coming week as well.

Finally in Ag 8 we are learned about birds and reptiles. I was very proud of myself for doing a lesson on snakes. Everyone that was in my Sci Ed 455 class knows that they day we talked about snakes I was clear on the other side of the room. My students really got into the lessons about birds and their relation to dinosaurs and they also thought it was really neat how much snake venom makes your blood clot. They were making great connections to real life and asking some awesome questions as well.

With FFA this week we are practicing for our Spring CDEs which we will compete in this upcoming Thursday. We are taking a team to the Environmental and Natural Resources Competition. Check out some of our pictures from practice this week.

I fully intend to finish strong as my last few weeks come to a close. I still have a lot of things to fine tune and I want to make sure those are my areas of focus. Some exciting things coming up this week include a visit from Mrs. Rice, Spring CDEs, and making a visit to see one of my fellow student teachers, followed by a weekend in State College to attend the PA Song Birds workshop at Shaver's Creek. It is going to be a very busy week but I am really looking forward to it!

Inspirational Quote of the Week:

Am I really half way done?

The previous had been  very interesting, from my flash drive eating itself (again!) to traveling to Penn State for the second student teacher seminar, I had a lot of fun teaching my students this week picking up all of my classes as well as celebrating National Agriculture Week!

Ag 7 was a continuation about plants this week. We talked about germination and set up a lab. Half of the class will be growing their corn seeds in the dark (we have placed them in a cabinet in the room) and the other half of the class has their seeds in the light next to the window. I had my students come up with hypothesis about what they think will happen to their seeds as they grow in the conditions that they were randomly assigned. We will be checking our seeds in 5 days (Tuesday!!) and then we will conclude our lab experiment in 10 days. I was not really happy with my teaching this week in my ag 7 class. I feel like I lectured too much and got away from being really hands on. I am not sure why this happened, but I know I need to fix this next week because I could my students were not really feeling it.

This week I also picked up both CASE AFNR classes.We shared our Water Stories, which were really good, some a lot more interesting than others, but they were very creative.  We are also starting the Ag Mechanics Unit and kicking things off with scale. I am happy that I am tapping into those skills that I learned in AEE 350 but teaching scale is really hard, especially when you are no math wiz yourself. So far my students seem to be handling it well but we did a few issues with remembering how to read rulers (apparently after 5th grade that skill is no longer relevant.) Needless to say we have been doing a lot of practicing and making sure we have the skills we need to move onto the next step which will be to design birdhouses. I am really excited to see what type of designs they come up with, from their water stories I can tell that some of them will create some very elaborate designs.

Finally in Ag 8 we have been transitioning from Conservation into Animal Sciences. We talked about invasive and native species here in New Jersey and also began talking about insects. I got my students really good this week too. I told them that I had insects for them to try at the end of class. They were on the edge of their seats the whole time wondering what "bugs" I was going to have them try. Unfortunately buying insects to eat is a challenge around here but they were just as excited to get gummy worms (this could be a great interest approach as well!)

I cannot believe that my student teaching experience is almost over. I have been having so much fun and learning so much from Dr.McLean and my students. I have enjoyed working with the FFA and the officers. Everyone has made me feel so welcome. I will be sad when the experience is over. I am super excited for the next two weeks because we will be practicing and competing in The Environmental and Natural Resources CDE event at Rutgers, and working on a lot of other FFA things as well. I have a lot of projects coming up with my students and I am really hoping to get them outside to our ecology center soon too! Hopefully the weather stays warm!



Quote of the Week:

The more hands on the better

This past week I really tried to step out of my comfort zone. I tried a prezi and tried to do more hands on note taking with my students.

We also had another FULL week! Woo hoo!!!

First up are my 7th graders, they were learning about plants! We learned about the parts of a plant, the parts of a flower, the parts of a seed, seed dispersal, and seed germination. I thought class started out really strong in the beginning of the week with my hands on notes. Monday the students created a flip book for the parts of the flower and Tuesday (with the idea/inspiration coming from Dr.McLean) I created a flower in which the students would write down the name of the flower part and the definition of that part on the back of the petal.  This way they have an interactive way to study their flower parts. I must say my 7th graders are VERY artistic!  Wednesday I gave them fill in the blank notes, everything went really well except I had a tiny brain malfunction and forgot that they were 7th graders and not college students and  had a part for them to take notes as I was speaking. (Ooopps!)The blank looks on their faces were indication enough for me and the next day I made sure that I did not do that to them. This is also something that I am going to work on this upcoming week as well.

(Parts of the Plant)

(Parts of the Flower)

(Even one of my life skills students had fun with this :) )

CASE AFNR it was all about water! We learned about precipitation and how it creates run off and streams and lakes! We used blue food coloring and small mountain like diagrams! Pretty cool stuff! The kids had a blast with it and were using their iPads to record what was happening as they were doing it so they could go back a rewatch their results! We also wrote stories as if we were water droplets. As you journey through the stages of the water cycle you got to come up with your own way of how you got to where you were and how you will get to where you are going next. Some of them are very creative for example we have one water droplet that ended up as Lebron James's sweat and another that has ended up as horse manure. I cannot wait for story time on Tuesday when we get to hear the stories and see some of the visuals that they students came up with. I cannot wait to share those this week too!

In 8th grade we talked about animal diets and I used guided notes for them. They seemed to become a little more interactive with this but things really took off when we talked about predators and prey. We made an interactive flip book! The students really seemed to enjoy it, especially those in my class of 9. They really got into the coloring and designing after they wrote down all the content. I hope to try some more things with them this week that are "out of the box" because they are such small classes I really want them to interact and get moving. In Ag 9 we also went to the media center to create out Wildlife Fact Pages. Each student was able to pick an animal that interests them and they had to create a one page fact sheet about the animal and include components like a food chain, the habitat of the animal, what their young are like, etc. We used a new type of technology called Doctopus. I know funky name right? It is just like google docs and sends the project directly to the students. It allows for easy grading at you can monitor your students progress throughout the class. It makes for an easy way to remind students to stay on task because you can have eyes on everyone at once! (Check back this week for a sample of a few of those projects!)

(Examples of the Predator vs. Prey Foldables)

And finally we get to the MAJOR excitement of the week HORTICULTURE EXPO!!!! This year we took 12 entries with us and 10 students (that was nothing compared to what the high school took!) and we loaded onto a bus and headed to Mercer County Community College. I saw first hand what it was like to be a Middle School Advisor at my first ever CDE!!! I also learned that it is always good to be prepared, I had a ziplock baggie full of tape, a glue gun, glue sticks, wire cutters, scissors, and extra price sheets, they definitely came in handy (shout out to Caleb for suggesting an ag teacher tool kit last semester!)  I think my favorite part of the day was seeing all of our FFA members wait in anticipation to see if they placed or not and them rushing up to Dr. McLean and I to tell us how they did and they kicked some behind! They compete against high school students and out of the 12 entries that we took 10 of them placed! We walked away with:
One 1st, one 2nd, two 3rds, two 4ths, four 5ths, and whole lot of comments from the judges! I was so proud of them and I could tell that they were happy because all their hard work paid off. Way to go Middle School FFA!! I also enjoyed myself throughout the day speaking with different teachers and advisors. It made me feel so special when someone would come up to Dr. McLean and I and say "How are you enjoying your experience? You really are learning from the best!" It made me realize how fortunate I am to be able to take part in this unique experience. At the beginning of student teaching I was sure that I did not want to go straight into the classroom that I wanted to have other hands on experiences first, now I am not so sure, who knows maybe I will wind up in the classroom right after graduation after all!?

(Dr. McLean helps students finalize their entry)

(my first attempt at a panoramic picture)

(The classroom with some of the entries)

(The entry that won 2nd place, he made this in an air filter)

(We have a girl who was wearing her mom's FFA jacket from Mississippi...so awesome!)

(So I wasn't in FFA but I can navigate my way around Official Dress and making sure everyone looks nice!)

(Attending a workshop)

(heading back after a long day)

(and last but not least the "advisor" shot, cameras, tool bag, and candy in hand)

Inspirational Quote of the Week: