Solving the Problem One Student at a Time

Today I was able to do a teaching lab on the problem solving technique. I saw last week how some of the other students approached this, so I definitely felt that I had an advantage going into today. As I was preparing for the lesson though, I wasn't as comfortable as I have been the last couple weeks, but I didn't think anything of it. I had a solid idea of what I wanted to accomplish, dealing with the problem solving technique of possibilities/factors. This one seemed to rather easy to grasp, with parts I could engage the students with, so they would participate.




I always seem to be the most nervous right before I start speaking for the lesson, but once I tell the students to begin the bell work, I automatically feel a little more calm. I was able to have good discussions with the students, but some of the students weren't completely open with some items. I had to bring in some different areas to help them understand the idea. One example was when I asked Caleb, "Do you have any plants or a garden?" He replied with a no and so I tried to ask if his parents or anyone else he knew had a garden. He still was very stiff about agreeing to my question. I didn't really know what to say, so I tried to talk to him about completing an SAE of growing plants and assess health in the future so he felt relevance to the lesson and what he was accomplishing.

Throughout my problem solving parts, I thought I did rather well. I first described the importance to the students through a brainstorming session, then discussed what possible plant characteristics could be noticed in the plants. I did a good job engaging all students, having some be the scribe for me while others came up with ideas. Once they were finished, I talked about factors of the environment that could cause plant health to deteriorate. I broke the students up into small groups so they could interact with one another and create a list. These strategies seemed to work well with my group, because almost all of them were engaged the whole time, making them act up less.

I felt this lab went rather well, but I still got feedback dealing with my enthusiasm and being nervous up in front of the class. This feedback is well received on my end, because I enjoy things people see that I obviously cannot. I feel everyone has a different type of enthusiasm, but I'm just not sure what mine is yet. I also think the nervousness is just simply all in my head. I have to keep learning as I go, because these experiences I have make me a better teacher. Today was a good experience, and I feel the problem solving approach could do wonders for students in my future classroom.

Here are some links on enthusiasm and the love for teaching that gave me some better perspective. Teaching is something we constantly have to work at, but is without a doubt one of the BEST, MOST REWARDING PROFESSIONS

"What makes great Teachers"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bIQ4-3XSxU

"The love for teaching"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYtQfnERUFE

Weekly Writing Oct. 21

This week I read a large amount of information on assessment. Every topic on teaching that I study begins the same way. I always think back to my days in school and how I viewed these topics. I also think about how some of the best teachers and worst teachers did these in their classroom.

When thinking about assessment, I get a bad taste in my mouth. I especially think back to my college freshman year when I was taking the general "weed out" courses. These were math, chemistry, and biology. Each class was like a cookie cutter mold of the semester before, and everything was so systematic I couldn't grasp the learning concepts. I guess you can say I changed majors into education because I wanted to not have other students have the same experience as I did. It seemed in those courses the educators didn't take responsibility for the learning, but made it all be the student's fault. As I read through the ASCD article on classroom assessment, I read a wonderful statement that said, "indeed, teachers and students share responsibility for learning."

From this statement, I thought of the different types of assessments I have done throughout my schooling. I took essay, matching, short answer, true/false, identification, and performance exams to manage how much I learned. Most of the classes had only one form of assessments throughout the whole year, which when I look back, were very poor representations of how much I learned. There were exams at the end of lessons, maybe a quiz here or there, but some classes had no projects or anything else to represent student's knowledge.

Since my perspective has changed from sitting in class to now teaching a class, I see the importance of dealing with assessments. Along with the variability of teaching a class, there needs to be variability with the assessments used. When I think of my classroom, I definitely want to have weekly checks of the material taught, so maybe a weekly quiz would be a consistent way to judge retention. I hope to at least have one project, and presentation, for students who learn in different styles.

One of the biggest problems is anxiety of taking tests. It is something that affects every student, and I still can't understand why teachers don't change up how tests are approached. I want the graded work for my students to be beneficial to them, and not something that they are more worried about failing then revealing how much they actually know. Changing the view on assessments is something I look forward to do as a future educator. Hopefully with new changes to assessments, there can be some changes in grading. Although that is a whole different story, both end up going hand in hand.

Thinking about assessment is one of the best ways a teacher can gain insight into how much students learn, but more importantly it provides feedback to the teacher on changes that need to be made on strategies for more retention of content knowledge.

Weekly Writing Oct. 14

The problem solving technique is one that is not completely familiar to me. I know I have done this in class at times, but the articles had so many good ideas and items that help reveal to me how much students actually grow using PST. To understand the steps, and mindset of students, was a great starting place. I was able to write down the steps to teaching PST. They are:

1. Interest Approach
2. Objective to be achieved
3. Questions to be answered
4. Problem Solution:
       define possible solutions
       acquire new knowledge, skill, and equipment
       formulate conclusions and general principles
5. Testing solutions through application
6. Evaluation of solutions

It was helpful for me to write these down, especially because I have to do a lesson plan and lab experience on PST. I have started to realize that being a teacher means that you shouldn't always have to spoon feed information to students. You should be there only to facilitate the learning, and not just have students follow. The problem solving technique, to me, feels like it can be intimidating at times. There are many different parts to PST, and if some parts are not done correctly, the whole lesson could be thrown off. Making sure the questions to be solved are appropriate, understanding prior knowledge, and having the right amount of transfer knowledge are just a few of the items needing consideration when trying this technique.

Using the problem solving technique is a great way to get students to engage in a topic of interest, and follow it all the way through. Creating intermediate goals allows for appropriate feedback, and using scaffolding techniques can help as well to create an easier learning process with different variations of learning. I believe the main goal of PST is to understand the process, from an educator and student perspective, while making the problem as relevant as possible to the students.

Demonstrations are Tougher than I Thought - Lab 3

Today I took part in a demonstration activity to teach my peers about an Ag Mechanics topic. When deciding what I was going to do, I was unsure on what my topic was going to be. I took a lesson out of one of the teachers who is helping us with AEE 350, Mr. Heasley. I decided to demonstrate how to create a corner with a perfect right angle. This sounded like a good idea in my head, but today after I was finished presenting, I realized it might have been just a little too much for me at this stage. I felt good with the material and understanding, but the demonstration was not as smooth as I had  hoped. I realized I did not give out my Job Operation Sheets halfway through my demonstration, so that tripped me up, especially because that is one of the most important parts to help understand a demonstration. I had the students engaged pretty well, but there was too much time where I lost some of the students because they were  sitting at their seats. I got some great feedback and was able to understand that its okay to bring the students up in front of the class to see what was happening.

One point that really struck me was engaging both sections of students, ones who were doing the demonstration, and the students who were in the seats. I didn't even realize this until I was told after my presentation. Once I was finished, I became vigilant to this item for the next presentation. For my role play of the next presentation, I was to play the role of a sleepy student. Usually this one isn't too hard for me, laugh out loud, but at one point, when the presenter was focused on the students doing the demonstration, I was asleep for close to 3 minutes!!! I couldn't believe it, but then realized how hard it was to actually keep the students engaged while the student demonstration was occurring.  It is tough enough to watch the students so they get the demonstration right, but even harder to take care of the ones who aren't engaged!



It was a great "aha!" moment that sometimes everyone needs to be involved in the tasks. Even though I am still getting used to both teaching and class management at the same time, it is amazing to see an outsiders perspective. I know real students would do the same thing, so I my peers role playing is a great start for me to learn. I thought the demonstration lab went well, even with the hiccups and unprepared parts that arose. I gained some great teaching knowledge that will transfer into my future teachings from this lab.