Focusing on the Positive... - week 5

This week was certainly eventful for me and really stretched me in many different directions... I have chosen to be an optimist.

Most of my Intro to Ag (9th grade) students are learning the FFA Creed quite well so far... in order to keep track of what words they miss while they are saying the Creed, I type "Name: _____________" and then follow up with the paragraph of the FFA Creed that they are reciting.... copy and paste about 4-5 of them onto a Word document... Then for grading, I just underline the words they miss, and subtract 1pt. each out of 100. It's what I would classify as being "Creatively Economical" in terms of time.

I also started teaching about Floriculture in my Intro to Ag class this week, and they love it... even the boys are very engaged because they are getting to work with their hands! Thursday I went over various tools and flowers commonly used in floriculture, and then on Friday we made corsages before Valentine's Day which they got to take home!

My Animal/Vet Science class also got to do a lot of hands-on activities this week as well... They learned about dehorning and disbudding, animal ID, and facilities design. On Thursday the students got to practice ear notching, tattooing, and ear tagging. Friday my Dad brought 2 young goat kids to the school and they got to see a live demonstration of disbudding using the hot iron method as well as an ear tagging demonstration. We finished out the class trimming up the "school's" adult goat's hooves which gave multiple students the opportunity to try it themselves, or at least help hold the goat if they didn't want to actually try the trimming themselves.

My biggest take-a ways from this week are to stay positive, do my best, and provide as many hands-on learning opportunities as possible to keep students engaged while teaching them real-life skills... after all, that is what Ag is all about... Additionally, I feel that I am making good progress on learning my student's names, given that I know ~ 50-60% of the 60+ students' names in my newest 3 classes, which I just started teaching within the last week. Knowing student's names definitely helps with classroom management and connecting with students... To help myself learn their names, I go down through their names in the grade book after I have entered grades and match names to their school pictures. I also printed a "seating chart" with their pictures that I can keep with my lesson plan as I teach.