Show Halters to Chalk Boards: Dylan's Ag Ed Journey

During my three days of microteaching, I learned some things that I think may be useful to me. The first thing that I learned is that I absolutely despise teaching over zoom. Many of the suggested improvements to my lessons would have been corrected by simply being in person. One of the worst parts about it is not having any connection with the students in the class. With them all being on one camera, I could not see their faces and it was very hard for me to even pick up their names. Engagement from the students was good for a zoom class, but the discussions were not able to be led very deeply because it was hard for me to read the students because I could not see body language of facial expressions. Another thing that I learned is that teaching over zoom, really makes me move through the content quicker than I originally plan for. During my first day, I taught what I had outlined in my first day lesson plan as well as half of the second days instruction. I am very happy that I had ev...

 Last Thursday evening and Friday, we had the amazing opportunity to learn from Mrs. Jessica Grundy. Learning about methods to teach using the inquiry approach to instruction, was a fantastic resource to add going into student teaching. I for one am not a good morning person and can fail to be attentive sometimes in class settings, but the activities that were presented to us were extremely engaging and interesting to learn about.  Relating it to what I already know about teaching and learning, the more that a student is engaged, the higher the chance for retention of the content. With the inquiry lessons, allowing the students to explore and interact with the content, allows the students to have a deeper understanding and a easier time with remembering the content because of their engagement. I learned a tremendous new method to instruct students during this event. I hope to accept Mrs. Grundy's challenge and incorporate a inquiry lesson into at least one unit in each class t...

 One literacy strategy that I found is using in inquiry approach to teaching as a whole. I am so excited to have had to opportunity to learn about this teaching strategy. I really liked to foldable insert for students notebooks that we got to create. I also I really enjoyed the beak activity because of the autonomy that students had to create what they thought would be the best design.  However the thing that I LOVED the most was the flower murder mystery activity. There are so many different classes that you can incorporate that idea into. I have already decided to extremely modify it and give my students in my leadership class a challenge question to determine who got hired for the job based on their application, resume and cover letter.