Well we have reached the end of week 8! We are a little over half way done with our student teaching internships and it have been a great learning experience so far. I will admit that the craziness of my first FFA Week and basically teaching a full course load got the best of me last week and I forgot to reflect in a blog post. I didn't anticipate how much prep and planning went into teaching different classes and different students that all vary in their own ways. Learning how to utilize the facilities at Oley has also been something I've been dedicating time to doing during teaching and whenever I have free time after school. I also started middle school on Friday which was my last introduction lesson since it is the last class I am picking up! Keep reading to find out some updates and exciting stuff I have been doing alongside my students.
I finished teaching 2 classes this week: Food Science and Agro Environmental Science. Teaching and learning about protein was really fun and I enjoyed teaching such a small class of only 7 students. I will be picking this course up right at the end to teach them about microbiology so I am not completely done with this class. One of the fun labs we did was making mozzarella cheese to learn about whey and casein milk proteins. 2 out of the 3 groups had a successful batch of mozzarella and it was interesting to learn about how rennet and citric acid are ingredients used to coagulate the milk proteins. We celebrated our successful cheese by making fried mozzarella balls, even though this class is at 9 am haha!
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| Food Science students enjoying their fried mozzarella cheese. |
I also closed out both periods of my 9th grade Agro Environmental Science class. I will admit that this was my favorite class to teach so far content and student wise. Their engagement and interest in the class was very helpful and motivated me to teach them. My period 2 class finished up the soils unit by creating a skit about a topic related to the ecological impacts that major crop production has on different ecosystem services. My students had a lot of fun with the skits and it was really nice to see them learning important topics like fossil fuel depletion and soil erosion while being creative. In my period 5 class, they dove into 2 different topics: GMOs and types of farming. We held a debate on the last day of class, where students had to back up their argument with research and credible source. Students got to work in groups and learn how a respectable debate is conducted. They were all confident in their research and did a great job of maintaining an appropriate classroom environment while also having fun. Overall, it was so much fun teaching my students about topics I really enjoy and I will make sure to pop back into the class when I have time at the end of my internship.
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| The development of the Trout. |
In plant science, I have been learning all about greenhouse management through learning content and actually having students work in the greenhouse. We received plugs in this past week for the spring plant sale coming up! We spent a few days out in the greenhouse conducting transplants and just overall maintenance. I am definitely getting more and more comfortable out in the greenhouse and just delegating tasks to students. I've always did small scale gardening or just having house plants, but most things plant science is fairly new to me. Mrs. Rice has been teaching me and explaining all things greenhouse management to me prior to teaching it, which has been super helpful. Students conducted a lettuce sensory evaluation lab where they compared the hydroponic romaine lettuce to store bought lettuce. For the most part, students enjoyed the hydroponic lettuce better and thought it tasted sweeter. They got to enjoy a salad afterwards which I thought was funny to watch because most kids inhaled them in like 2 minutes even though class is right after lunch. They told me that food is their biggest motivator to get work done, so looks like I will have to use candy or food as an external motivator in plant science from now on.
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| Hydroponic Romaine Lettuce. |
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| Greenhouse Plants. |
Thanks,
Lauren
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