Part One:
The main driver of success in the classroom is engagement. Without student engagement, it doesn’t matter the depth of knowledge you’re trying to deliver because the majority of students simply don’t care. You, of course, have the select students that are motivated by grades, the individuals that don’t want to let parents down, but how do you connect lessons to the glassy-eyed mouth breathers? Some educators resent engagement activities and feel such activities are about entertainment instead of education. Engagement is as much about work and making them sweat through rigorous work then it is about smile. Some suggested strategies include; being transparent with the purpose of learning, granting students more choice and engaging in project-based learning (Wolpert-Gawron, 2019). You have to include students and sell them on the fact that knowing the information presented will truly benefit them now and in the future; make it applicable, relevant, engaging and FUN! Students feed off teacher’s enthusiasm for a subject and specifically each lesson. If you dread the content as the teacher, how are students going to get excited to learn it? This is not only opinion, several studies starting as early as the 1970’s to present day have found teacher enthusiasm has positive effects on task behavior, recall, and test performance (Orosz, et.al, 2015). Also in my humblest opinion, student-teacher relationships are another key component of a successful classroom. John Hattie’s research on effect size on student achievement has teacher-student relationships as a .72 with a baseline of .4 as highly significant in student achievement (Turner & Alijure, 2016). Isn’t it amazing that having a good teacher-student relationship can be so effective and it doesn’t take hugging and going easy on them to do so. Positive relationships isn’t being a pushover, it means allowing ownership of rules and expectations, setting high standards within the classroom, having positive and specific feedback, building trust, create a positive atmosphere, truly care about student success and establish a growth mindset within your walls.
The last one rings with me because we as humans hate to see failure, we are terrified by it and won’t allow it. Kids grow from failure, we grow from failure, creating a culture that failure is always “bad” makes trying things out difficult. We should grow and cultivate students risking boldly and trying at every corner, we then can harvest individuals that can be adaptable and overcome setbacks and adversity. I am a firm believer that students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. While sometimes I believe that lecture is necessary, I do think that strategies can be used to make them thought provoking, interactive and fun. Again the name of the game is engagement, at no other time in our history have young people demanded engagement, it is literally at their fingertips 24/7, 365 days a year.
Activities/Hands-On Learning:
Hands-on learning is essential for students who are kinesthetic learners, these are about 90% of the students that I would have seen in the agriculture classroom. In our school, this would be a very consistent representation of the entire population of students. With hands-on learning, I would usually give the students an activity to do in order to find the information. I usually combine inquiry-based learning with hands-on learning because students oftentimes learn best when moving around while engaged. I like to call one of my favorites, “The Boone and Crockett Engagement Activity.” This strategy can be utilized in any unit, but I really appreciate the parallels with this activity and my natural resources unit. To begin this activity, I came up with about 20 vocab words from the current unit. I printed outlines of bears - you could use deer, elk, turkeys, etc - and cut them out. I wrote the vocab words on them and hid them in various places around the shop. Once the words were hidden, I printed and cut out the definitions to hand out to students. Each student is given one definition and sent out to the shop to ‘hunt’ for their bear. Once they have found their corresponding bear, they return to the classroom and I have them present their ‘trophy’ to the class. All students receive a notes chart with the vocab word on one side and the definition left blank for them to fill in on the other side. I really enjoy this activity because it gets students up and moving out of their seats, it gets them a chance to see the shop and explore while searching for something beneficial to the current unit. I also appreciate that it gives students the opportunity to speak publicly while presenting to their peers - I find a lot of the time that when I stand next to students while they read off a paper, they don’t realize they are truly speaking in front of the class. However, as much as I utilize this strategy, there are some downfalls. I found, over the years, that this activity needs to be set up in a certain way, or it won’t work. I realized that if I am not the one who hides the bears, I obviously don’t know where they are hidden to help students when they have questions. For this reason, I decided to start color-coding the word and their definitions - this aids students with matching the word and definition.
Gallery Walk
A gallery walk is a strategy that gets students out of their seat, while remaining in the classroom. There are several different ways that teachers can execute the gallery walk. The first is one that I call “The Picasso Moment.” For example, I use this with the digestive system. I would give each group one component of the ruminant digestive tract. The students are then given some time to research and create a poster on their assigned content. Then, as a class we go on a ‘walk-about’ and as we get to their posters, the students present the information to the class. Another form of this strategy is called the “Parking Lot.” For this one, I write three to four questions pertaining to the content, each on their own sheet of easel pad paper. Students are given post-it’s to write their answer and stick on the ‘parking lot.’ Then, I have students each go to a paper and share their classmates' sticky notes with the class. The third way this strategy can be utilized is a note-taking strategy. I would print off QR-codes for students to scan with their phones and take notes on the content of the website that is linked. We would gather back and talk about what they found through the scanning of codes. There are so many more ways to utilize this strategy, but for the sake of time, I’ll just leave you with those three. When I was in the classroom, I really enjoyed this activity because it gets students out of their seats and they are usually so busy moving around, that they don’t really have the time to talk with others. I believe that when students are creating, presenting, and viewing other students’ work, they are truly learning from each other in the best way. Although, just like everything else, there are some disadvantages of using this strategy. If you aren’t putting strict time limits on this activity, things can get out of hand fast. You’ll have students where they’re not supposed to be and talking.
KWL - Interactive
My students would say KWL’s are another ‘Jacoby classic.’ I love a good KWL! They help both the student and me understand their prior knowledge, what they want to investigate and can be used as a formative assessment at the end of a lesson. If you are unfamiliar, let me break it down for you. The K category tells me what the student knows, W tells me what the student wants to know and L tells me what the student learned.
This usually a sheet that is filled out during the lesson. I use these at the beginning of every unit to let me know where my students are with background knowledge. I come up with a list of words from the standards and write them as bullet points on the board. Then, I ask students to list five things that they know about any of the words. We go over those as a class and I usually collect one statement from each student to write on the board. Next, I tell students to come up with three to five questions they have - depending on the unit and how many words I have given them. Once they have their questions, I have them write the answers in the L section. Again, I thoroughly enjoy this strategy, but it can sometimes get carried away and end up as a lecture strategy - there is a thin line there. I also like that this is a nice introduction for a unit, but since it’s not overly ‘teacher guided’ - meaning I don’t tell them what questions to ask, or really give them any information - it can get taken down rabbit paths easily. I would never recommend this strategy as a single use, or assessment, during a unit. It simply doesn’t have enough direction. KWL’s have been in use since the middle of the 1980’s, they are an effective way to formative asses one student or an entire class to gain an understanding of where they are in a lesson (Steel & Dyer, 2014).
Reading/Highlighting Partner Swap
It’s not very often that students have to read passages from text books in an agriculture class. We do, however, assign readings from technical writing publications and work a lot on agricultural issues and current events. It is a belief of mine that learning should always be cross-curricular, so I try to make sure that I include some sort of reading in each unit I teach. Throughout my years of teaching, I have come to appreciate and utilize newsela.com. This website is life-changing for late elementary, middle school and high school teachers. This tool allows you to search any topic of current event articles and modify it to meet a specific reading level. It’s such a valuable resource for teaching any subject. Most of the time, I would use this website and print off the articles for this strategy. Each student gets a copy of the same article - I’d print off specific grade levels to differentiate for the students that need it - and a highlighter. Next, I would tell them that they need to read the article and highlight what they would consider ‘important.’ Once they have completed that, I would ask them to swap with their table partner - who has a different colored highlighter - and highlight what they thought was important and wasn’t highlighted on their partner’s article. We would discuss, as a class, some of the key components that should have been highlighted. I would also say that the newsela.com website is perfect for ELL students as it does offer reading levels that only point out needed information and some articles can be translated. I would say a main downfall of this strategy is that the students who need the differentiated articles will have to switch with each other, so that would be a management technique that the teacher needs to establish.
Part Two:
At a time like this, mental health is so important. Just like I stated earlier, if students aren’t engaged and are lacking a relationship with their teacher, they won’t consume the information. I personally feel that the same thing happens when students are struggling with their mental health whether we are learning remotely or traditionally. When things aren’t right in the brain, it can’t focus and doesn’t retain material. Even though I am the current Athletic Director, I still keep a Google Classroom for students and post updates for sports performance workouts, mental toughness and other things they can be doing to help themselves with college recruiting. Although, if I were still teaching through this crazy time, I would reassure my students that this is definitely not a ‘normal’ school year by any means, and they need to make sure to be active and get outside. I can empathize with colleagues who have traditionally been teacher-led, teacher-focused trying to get out of their safety zones and turn their classes into project-based or student centered learning. It’s a difficult task to make sure the standards tie into research and assignments that students can complete at home. On top of that, even if you think of a project that students can complete at home, it is often hard to explain it in enough detail over the computer and it is hard for students to turn it into the teacher. I would like to add that attention to detail in instructions needs to be clearer than ever before, you can’t simply ask “what questions do you have,” you can’t scan the room looking for the student who is overwhelmed. I do think at this point in time, our students are so accustomed to technology that they are shining throughout this process. We as educators have to feel comfortable handing over the reins of our world and allow these students to blossom in an environment that is natural to them no matter how much we “BOOMERS” might be struggling.
References:
Orosz, G., Toth-Kiraly, I., Bothe, B., Kusztor, A., Ullei-Kovacs, Z., & Janvari, M. (2015, March 5). Teacher enthusiasm: a potential cure of academic cheating. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00318/full
Steele, J., & Dyer, T. (2014). Use of KWLs in the Online Classroom as it Correlates to Increased Participation. Journal of Instructional Research, 3(2). doi:10.9743/jeo. 2017.14.2.1
Turner, M., & Aljure, I. (2016, April 1). 7 Powerful Actions You Can Take To Improve Relationships with Your Students - Brain Based Learning: Brain Based Experts. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from http://www.brainbasedlearning.net/improve-relationships-with- students/
Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2019, February 7). Effective Engagement Focuses on Getting Students to Care. Retrieved April 6, 2020, from http://neatoday.org/2019/02/05/effective- engagement-focuses-on-getting-students-to-care/
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