How can we Facilitate and Design Excellent Teaching and Learning?

 

What is Effective Teaching?

            According to the Oxford English Dictionary, effective is an adjective that denotes something or someone as being “successful in producing a desired or intended result.” With this, effective teaching can be defined as when a teacher can produce students who routinely meet desired learning objectives. Through meta-analysis research, Rosenshine and Furst have identified characteristics of effective teachers. The top five that contributed most to student learning were:

·         Clarity- “the ability to present information in a clear and understandable fashion.” Teachers who demonstrate clarity have clearly stated objectives and plan efficiently for their lessons.

·         Variability- adding variety to your teaching techniques. Teachers who use variability in the classroom look for new and innovative ways to present information to students.

·         Enthusiasm-  Teachers who love teaching and engaging with their subject matter are always more effective than those who aren’t. When you’re excited to teach, your students are more excited to learn.

·         Task-Oriented Behavior-Effective teachers take teaching seriously. They are responsible, steady, systematic and poised.

 

·         Effective teachers provide students with the opportunity to learn. They identify standards and objectives that need to be met and provide opportunity for students to meet them.

What is Learning?

            Learning is defined as “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.” For an agriculture teacher, these skills can encompass a wide array of topics in food, fiber and natural resources. Learning occurs when students can retain information presented to them and use that information in a purposeful and transformational way. Teachers teach far more than their subject matter. They change the behavior of students in a way that guides them into productive, self-aware citizenship. Teachers who understand how learning occurs are far more effective.

How do we Decide What and How to Teach?

            Having clearly defined objectives is always key in being both an effective teacher and learner. Effective teachers plan accordingly and know specifically what competencies they want students to reach. Knowing what to teach is often far easier than knowing how to teach. Variability is a key characteristic of an effective teacher, so making sure that a variety of methods are employed to engage students plays an important role in deciding how to teach.

 

 

 

 

First- Class First Week

       The first week for any teacher can be more than stressful to say the least. Getting to know your students while covering some ground expectations and looking forward into the year takes a lot of planning and careful execution. The author covers some of her advice on dealing with students, getting prepared for the year to come, and setting those expectations in the second part of our reading. Some important advice that was shared with me from my virtual mentor team for this section is listed below.

First-Day Butterflies

“To be honest, I hope that I ALWAYS get the beginning of the year butterflies...it means that I care and that I love what I do.” –Krista Pontius

            It’s important that we prepare for the inevitable school year and have all of our ducks in a row ready to start off on the right foot. Nervousness can be mitigated through organization and preparation, but Mrs. Pontius brings up a great point. We should always be a little nervous because we aspire to do well! We will always face new challenges and teach new students year after year, and butterflies are a way to know you care.

To Rule or not to Rule

“I’m a major proponent of not posting rules and not reading rules off to students.  My general statement was, “You know what it means to behave in school. If you forget, it happens.  If you decide you don’t want to act appropriately for school, we’ll talk about what’s next after school during football practice.” –Becky Haddad

            A main point of the author made in this section was that students know how to behave, and listing off a set of rules just won’t cut it. Keeping it simple and reminding them they know how to behave is what is best. Teachers need to have some degree of flexibility to deal with various circumstances relating to discipline, so having a simple rule requiring respect and stating some clear expectations is key.

Expectations- no Exceptions

“Expectation need to be shared.  General expectation can be on the first day, but save the rest for the next few days.  I did like to cover my syllabi and have the students fill out an information sheet.  It opens opportunities for questions about me and my classroom (expectations).”

            This again ties into the point made by Ms. Haddad that reading off rules is sometimes redundant for a room full of high school students. For many, the rules simply haven’t changed since day one of kindergarten, and more often than not, you’re one of about 6 teachers ratting off the same rules. Set some general expectations—but leave some of the procedures for the days to come. Take the first day to get to know your students and develop some rapport with them.

Respect and be respected

“Just talk with them not at them.  General information that I gather would include:  personal interests, learning styles appreciated and disliked, understanding of agriculture.”

All of my mentors agree that respect is a give and take thing. Take the first day to interact with your students and get to know them. Do some “temperature taking” to gauge what dispositions they may have about your subject and what their set of understanding may be. Effective teachers need to know their audience, and that should be a goal of your first week. Treat your students with respect, and you’re more likely to be respected in return.

In-Real Life Lesson Reflections (wk.1)

This week for our In-Real Life (IRL) lab for AEE 212, we were assigned random learning objectives to accomplish within a 15-minute demonstration. These were topics that could encompass a variety of topics, such as juggling or origami. My objective was to have students able to identify plants in a landscape design. To do this, I had symbols that denoted each plant species, and provided relevant background information to help them identify them on a landscape design. For our activity, a photograph or information were presented, and the students had to draw the symbol for the corresponding plant. At the end of the lesson, students were given an assignment to gauge how well they have learned from the exercise.

            We were challenged to identify some teaching “gems”- things we did well when teaching, and “opps”- opportunities for improving our teaching. Below are some of my gems and opps for this lab exercise. My gems and opps are listed below.

“Gems”
1. Using the whiteboard game
2. objective was stated and met
3. Reviewing material before quiz

 

 "Opportunities for Growth" 

1. Pace was too fast
2. Content could be covered more thoroughly
3. Persona was not very relaxed

Going forward, my goals will include slowing down and being more relaxed during the class. In the future I hope to condense my lessons to allow for a more relaxed and effective approach.