Week 5 at Oley Valley

    Welcome back to my blog! This post is going to entail a reflection on what events happened this past week, as I finished week 5 of student teaching. I can't believe we are this far into the experience already, even though it is starting to reflect in the amount of courses I'm teaching. This week I tried to incorporate a lot more hands-on and inquiry based learning for my students, so keep reading to find out more. 

    To wrap-up talking about soils in my two Agro Environmental Science classes, we conducted a soil ribbon test and then made dirt cups. The students were able to get their hands dirty and test three different soil samples from around the school to determine their textures. Overall, the class results were similar and my 9th graders really liked learning the skill. We also made dirt cups this week, with each layer representing a different soil horizon. Of course they were very happy because food was involved, but it was a great way to wrap up the topic and to see them make connections in their learning. They are learning about earth worms this upcoming week and will actually be dissecting them in the lab! The rainbow trout eggs arrived to the school this week as well, so we had the opportunity to sort through the eggs and get them acclimated to their new tank. In total, we had about 150 eggs and the student didn't find any dead ones when sorting through them!

Rainbow Trout eggs.

    I have been learning a lot about classroom management techniques, as I realized my students are starting to get a lot more comfortable in the classroom. Although this is a good thing, it also can be disruptive at times and interrupt the learning in the classroom. I have been working towards creating a classroom environment that is comfortable but they also need to follow my expectations, such as raising their hand and not using cell phones while I am presenting them new material. It is good experience, as it mimics what it will be like when I eventually get my own classroom. 

    Although we had a lot of fun lessons this week, I have been struggling to keep up on my lesson planning as I take on more and more classes. Animal Science reproduction is a fairly new content area for me, so I found that I had to teach myself the content the night prior to teaching it. This really stressed me out and I need to take more advantage of the time I have during the weekends to get myself prepared for the upcoming week. Luckily, Mr. Deysher has been teaching me a lot of content about repro before I teach it and it has been super helpful to incorporate some the activities he uses into my own lessons. We are going to hopefully be dissecting pregnant rats to learn about the various uterine structures this week so stay tuned to see how that goes. Overall, it was another successful week at Oley Valley and I learned that if I want to continue being the best possible teacher for my students I need to dedicate more of my time to planning and preparation. Thanks for reading!

Lauren :)