E-moments, jello, and good times

It was a short week to say the least. Monday we were off for Presidents day and then Tuesday we had a snow day, Wednesday and Thursday I was in the classroom teaching and Friday I will be back at Penn State for our first return seminar.

So what happened this week, how did it go.

Wednesday was an exciting day full of perhaps to much caffeine coupled with the 4 day weekend . I was excited to try some new things in my Ag Science 3 class, the Friday prior we had been learning the foundational information for IPM which was a rough 15-20 minutes of powerpoint and and discussion. This being paired with the exhaustion from the week and the long night prior for our awards interviews I questioned how much was retained. My struggle with this course is I want to provide as much information as possible because there are many students that are highly interested in the topic and are highly interested in testing for their private applicators license. With this I set out Wednesday to create the largest go get it moment I have ever done. I divided the students into 6 groups, with each group having to locate 10-12 pieces of information that were on the powerpoint slides. They had to then condense this information into one "slide" a large blue posit note, and then present the information to the class.

This went very well after we went over the directions several times, the challenge was that students wanted to paste the info on the post it note and read it to the class, which would have been no better then me going through the monster of a powerpoint on IPM. Once we got over this bump the "slides" turned out great and the students did an excellent job at condensing the information and providing examples for comprehension. We ended the class was the introduction of our pesticide safety skit, something the students seem extremely excited about competing.

Then came Introduction to Ag Science, Mr. Fellenbaum has other obligations that block so I was on my own, with the supervision of several other teachers, to carry out our measure me lab where students were to mix dangerous chemicals together and then pour them into constructed containers. So in reality they were using the lab equipment to make jello which then was poured into paper boxes. Once the students began pouring in their mixture is when I felt like I was set up for failure, the boxes leaked, not just a little, they leaked a lot. I felt like I must have done something wrong, but the students were following the procedure to a tee. We quickly filled our boxes and off to the fridge they went.

When Mr. Fellenbaum returned I expressed by concerns about these boxes, he opened up the fridge and said they looked great, some of the best jello boxes he has seen. Lesson learned this was supposed to happen, well now I know, as always flexibility is key.

Thursday was another great day in the classroom. The highlight of my day was crop scouting in Ag Science 3, now I know that when ever possible we should create real situations for our students however with the current season we are not able to actually go out and crop scout so we crop scouted the school supplies infecting our corn field. The students at first were a little frustrated with this activity and the idea that I just wanted them to attempt the crop scouting form lead to a lot of questions, exactly what I was going for. After the scouting activity we had a great discussion about what questions they encountered during the activity. We then finished the block working on our pesticide safety skits and going over the expectations of the videos and skits created.

My day ended with us completing our jello lab in Ag Science 1 where I am quickly seeing the problems that can occur with limited lab space. In addition, I noticed that the beakers used the day before were not cleaned as well as I would prefer, so I had two student volunteer to work on re- cleaning them at the beginning of the block tomorrow, we will see how this goes.
 In addition, today the third paragraph of the FFA Creed was due so we had some inspiration as we went through trying to add expression in our voice as we recited the Creed.

As I prepare to head to Penn State I have made mock sub plans for my Ag Mechanics class for tomorrow, this was an interesting endeavor seeing at the real teachers are the subs ha ha. However, when I travel to SLLC in a few weeks Ms. Cornman and myself will both be gone from Ag Mechanics so there will be a real sub and a real opportunity to write true sub plans, something I am excited to test out.

Overall it was a good two days this week I only wish it was a little longer.

till next time...