Week 2 - Jan 27- 31

Good Afternoon,

Monday- Today I taught by first AFNR class/ lab. It was very excited because I was able to add some additional items for interest approaches and to help students better understand the content. The class went really well as I had them first each introduce themselves. I was going through the short power point and for some reason the projector stopped working. Luckily I was almost done but I think i will plan on reviewing the last few slides in the future. My landscape class reviewed the final elements of design. After Friday I combined the lesson to give it more content. This worked out well because I had a little more to cover but then also had enough for the students to review in an e-moment.

Tuesday- Today Cumberland Valley had a 2 hour delay due to the cold temperatures, this decreased class time to 26 minutes. With the shortened class time it is very challenging to accomplish everything that was originally intended. In my AFNR lab, I decided to cut an activity out and move it over to tomorrow in order to allow students enough time to get through the majority of their lab activity. I still had to shorten the lab by only asking the students to work through 2 examples and then do the remaining 3 tomorrow. This worked well but I wish I didn't shorten it so much because some students ended up finishing five minutes early. In our co-hort meeting I was able to brainstorm some ideas for students who do finish early to be able to work on until class is finished. I intend to talked to Darla about what I can effectively do with this class. I'm also struggling with this class to follow directions, when I give the directions its hard to keep their attention and then they are not fulling completing the lab activity in the case handout. I think tomorrow I will prepare a short quiz to hold students accountable for reading directions.
In landscaping, I had students working on an area/ perimeter worksheet. I expected the students to breeze through the worksheet to be able to move on to working on their dream houses however I had lots of questions on the actual math activities. I didn't help the matter by ending up confusing students on solving for perimeter in problems that contained circles. I will start tomorrow off by reviewing the answers since we didn't get completely through it as we as reviewing how to complete circle problems and correctly solve for perimeter.
After school four students who are interested in the Livestock Judging CDE held their first practice. I worked with Romberger to introduce to them how to take notes, what format to use and the basics of decision making. We demonstrated this by having the students judge a class of pens and defend their decisions on why they placed them they way they did. This worked out really well to help them figure out how to use the note taking system and figure out what should be written where. We assigned them the homework to go home and begin to learn the parts and terms related to steers.

Wednesday-
My AFNR class went okay today. Most of the students got through everything and were working up to the bell. I had them take a quiz before they started on directions, the students were having issues reading and deciphering the graph provided. I helped many students with hints for the quiz because I mainly wanted to stress the importance of reading the directions and following the steps.
The landscape class went well today, I feel the students are caught up however I still feel like I don't make it through the content that I plan to. I don't even think it is complex content but I'm not able to get through it with them. I keep mixing up the lesson and giving them short group work assignments and I think that might be the hang up. Also bellwork always takes so long because the students don't come into until the bell rings. .

Thursday-
This was an interesting day as I am seeing students beginning to push more behavior as they become more comfortable with me. Immediately in my AFNR class as I was trying to have them read the lab procedures and complete a question for bell work I was struggling to get a group of boys to quiet down and do their assigned task. After redirecting them once I ended up having one of them move seats to the front of the room. I sent students who were completed to the lab to begins setting up and asked those who I knew hadn't yet completed the bell work to stay to finish it. In lab this student is grouped with the same group of students so I switched him to a different group. At first I was going to have a student swap with him but then I didn't want to look like I was punishing her, so I just added him to a group of 2. This class will be switching seats and being assigned new lab partners next week in efforts to keep everyone on task. Looking back I think this was the right decision because I need to really establish authority with them and demonstrate my expectations.
My landscape class went faster today as I set a timer to help keep myself and students on track to complete small assignments. This seemed to work out well on the Ipad. I am glad to see students doing what I was hoping would occur with the Dream House project as they are putting time and thought into it, making it creative. Some students had some really interesting ideas.

Friday-
In the AFNR class today we decided to mix up the power point by assigning groups to search for the information and then presenting the information to the class. It went pretty well as far as allowing students time to search for the information. To help students learn the information after reporting the notes we went to the lab and did an edible food activity to reestablish the soil horizons with sugar cookies, crushed cookies, chocolate pudding and butterscotch chips. As far as behavior issues today, I didn't have too much trouble with that group of boys but there was a lot of talking. Despite the talking they still get their work done so I will just continue to try to keep them focused and find additional tasks to complete. I am sincerely struggling though with two students whom don't have IEPs but work extremely slow and don't process information as as quickly. They usually are behind the rest of the students.

Landscaping went well. I asked students to look up edible plants to present to the class. I ended up letting them look up their plants but having to wait until the end to present because some students are done when at the same time other students' computers haven't even loaded. Either way it worked well at the end and served as a good wrap up.



Plan for Week 2

Monday- students off/ teacher in-service

Tuesday- Landscape-Can you eat plants?
                        1) Discuss with students what plants are edible and uses
                        2) students will work on their landscaping project.

               Leadership- Welcome
                        1) Procedures, Expectations, Consequences
                        2) Bell Work papers
                        3) Remaining time to work on FFA Week Activities 

               SAE- Welcome/ Where are we at with SAE book completion?
                        1) Procedures, Bell Work Papers
                        2) Finish Record Books!

                AFNR- 4.2.3
                           1) lab assignment

Wednesday- Landscape-Can you landscape with seasonings?
                         1) Review Powerpoint
                         2) Brainstorm creative herb designs.
                         3) Work on dream house design.

                     Leadership- Communications, what does it matter?
                         1) Content- why is communication important?
                         2) Ag issue presentation

                    SAE- Record Book Questions/ Resources needed
                         1) Bellwork
                         2) Record Books

                     AFNR- "mini- unit" quiz & 4.3.1
                         1) Check for understanding
                         2) Power Point for 4.3.1

Thursday-  Landscape-When is it best to landscape?
                         1) Review content
                         2) planting bulbs
                         3) work on landscapes

                  Leadership- Isn't it just speaking in public?
                         1) Background to preparing a speech/ Hunger banquet

                 SAE- How has your SAE benefited you?
                         1) Bell Work
                         2) Hunger Banquet

                AFNR- 4.3.1.
                         1) Classroom Activity

Friday- Sub in (Record Book Contest) 
           Landscape- Where are our landscapes at?
                         1) Work day, work on landscape designs

            Leadership- Work Day
                         1) Work on FFA Week Activities, Hunger Banquet

            SAE- Where do you see your SAE  going in the future?
                         1) Finalize 2013 books
                         2) Work on FFA Week Activities

                 AFNR- 4.3.2
                         1) Lab Activity