Problem Solving and 21st Century Skills

I sometimes like to think about what my ideal agricultural program would be like. What would the facilities be like? How would the students learn? What would the program focus be? My thoughts gravitate to images of me walking through the young orchard of fruit and nut trees early in the morning with my students following me and observing the living processes around them. In my vision, learning is a result of being aware of what is happening around us. The students’ curiosity leads questions and problems that they want to solve.

As teachers we are supposed to be preparing young people to be critical thinkers and creative; competent in the four areas identified as 21st century skills. That seems difficult to do when we use the same approaches that have led us to our current failing educational system.

Larmer and Mergendoller insist that to accomplish this task, project based learning can be especially effective.

Project based learning is more that just having the students complete projects to apply the knowledge that learned in the classroom. Project based learning is when the projects become the learning method. The students create their own projects based on their interests. Their natural curiosity and passion help drive them to ask questions and search for answers to the various problems or obstacles they encounter.

School-based agricultural education I believe is in a unique position to implement project based learning, considering that supervised agricultural experiences is part of the education model.

While reading up on project based learning and thinking about SAE's, I kept thinking about ways to help students find something that they are passionate about so that they can truly reap all of the benefits that this learning technique can provide. I did some searching around and I found a few resources that I think will be helpful in encouraging students to design and develop their projects.

I will share one with you that I found particularly helpful and I encourage you to check it out.
http://www.exploresae.com/

Questions and Empowerment

Asking strategic questions can be a useful tool to gauge student understanding, stimulate critical thinking, and more fully engage students in the lesson. But not any question accomplishes those purposes. Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Excellence elucidates methods for teaching and using effective questions. Question difficulty should be appropriate for the context; not too difficult that the students won’t feel comfortable answering, but not too easy so that the students don’t have to think at a deeper level to arrive at an answer. Students also benefit from "priming the pump" or asking some easier questions that get the students engaged and feeling comfortable that lead up to the more difficult questions. 

But what if students don't want to answer the questions at all? A publication from University of Florida advises using a few techniques to encourage participation. One techniques is to randomly select students to respond. I volunteered as a teacher's assistant for a horticulture teacher and he had written all of the student's names on plant labels and put them in a flower pot. He would ask a question first and then pull a label out and ask the student to respond. For this technique to be most effective, you should ask the question before drawing a name so that students don't "zone out" if their name is not called. 

But perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is not what to do if students don't want to answer our questions, but why they don't want to answer questions. In her TEDx talk, Kate Simonds, speaks of her personal experiences of being a student without a voice. At 17 years old, she stands in front of an audience to expound her frustrations with the education system and the fact that students have very little opportunity to voice what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. She states that there are many reasons why students don't want to answer questions or even engage in learning in general, but that perhaps it is because they see very relevance and value to the education that they are receiving as passive learners. 

The world is changing and is changing fast. The industrial model of education is no longer appropriate for preparing students to face the inevitable challenges that lay ahead. Empowering students by giving them a voice in their own education and autonomy over the decisions that affect them are essential for preparing the youth to be engaged citizens, creative thinkers, and powerful agents of change.

Interest Approaches and Grafting

This week we learned about interest approaches or anticipatory sets. The purpose on interest approaches is to guide students into the new lesson by having them recall past information. It is not a review but a strategy used for the students to see how what they learned and what they are about to learn will tie in together.

I am learning a lot of right now and it is difficult to manage all of the information so I decided to use an interest approach to a subject that I feel confident in as opposed to a content area that I would have to learn and then learn to teach. I decided to teach about grafting from the propagation unit in the horticulture course. And to be honest, I am pretty happy with how it went. I feel like the students were engaged, I asked questions that made the students think about what they knew and they were able to arrive pretty close to the answer that I was leading them to answer.

One struggle that I have is gauging the appropriate difficulty level at which to teach. I want it to me challenging and to make the students think hard about what I am asking; however, I don’t want it to be too difficult that they will not be able to completely comprehend what I am teaching. From what I have heard from other teachers is that the cognitive level of students varies widely and changes from year to year as well. I guess that is just another one of those skills that teachers pick up on as they acquire more and more experience: to be able to quickly discern the level of individual students and the class as a whole and adjust the content rigor accordingly.

I will leave you with some links to some great resources about primary and secondary principles of interest (Principles and Practices to Secure and Hold Interest by Kirby Barrick and Andrew Thoron) and a book that I am reading that has some great examples of interest approaches that they call engaging moments (Strategies for Great Teaching by Mark Reardon and Seth Derner, 2008)

And a quote from Dr. Foster that I thought was very true, "the most effective classroom management tool, is an engaging lesson." #KIR

The Art and Science of Writing Objectives

As I have written about before, two researchers, Rosenshine and Furst (1971), after conducting a meta-analysis identified clarity as the single most important effective teaching characteristic. It makes sense. If our teaching isn't clear, it will make it pretty difficult for students to learn. The question then is how do we ensure that our teaching is clear? Well, I believe, in part at least, that writing clear objectives is one way to start off on the right track. Even as a graduate student, my first week of classes were a bit overwhelming, mostly because there is so much time spent on going over syllabi and getting an anxiety provoking vision into all of the assignments and assessments that we will need to do to pass the course. And then doing that five or six more times for each of the classes you are taking. Starting the class period with daily objectives helps to get things rolling and focuses the students' cognitive energy on what is important to know right now, taking the first bite our of the elephant.

It's not just about writing an objective on the board either, objectives should help the students understand what is expected of them and challenge them to think. An article in the Agricultural Education Magazine (April 2005), by M. Susie Whittington provides some useful insights. Dr. Whittington uses Bloom's Taxonomy to create four different cognitive levels and then gives examples of words that could be used to write objectives. See the image below.





By simply asking students to list the parts of a plant they simply have to recall the information and write it down. This is an example an objective that requires low cognitive capacity. However, by asking the students to explain the parts of a plant they not only have to remember the parts of the plant but also their functions and importance for the life of the plant.

Whittington also states that if the objectives are designed to encourage higher levels of thinking then the lesson must also rise to the occasion. Therefore it is imperative that the teacher be prepared to deliver an awesome lesson!


Writing great objectives is an easy way to help students focus on what is important now and what they are expected to know or be able to do as well as encourage deeper thinking. That being said, you could write some exceptional learning objectives and still suck at teaching so you can't stop there. Objectives are just one piece of the puzzle.

First Day of School - What the Heck am I Going to Do?!

They say that the success or failure of a school year is determined by the first week of school. No pressure right! This week in lab, we role-played our first day of school and it was really funny, at least I thought it was. We had ten minutes to teach some part of the first class and my classmates role played different student personalities (the sleepy-kid, always on their phone-kid, the authority pusher, etc.). We had some good laughs.

 We are using a new application called Edthena to upload videos and comment/make suggestions to our classmates. Its pretty cool once you get the hang of it. Anyway, reviewing some of the suggestions from my classmates and watching myself teach, I realized that I would do things completely different on the first day of class. Here is my idea. First day of class, get the students immersed in some hands on learning. If it is a horticulture class, have them plant seeds. If you are teaching animal science, bring in animals to the lab, That would be a great first day of class in my opinion, Much better than going over the syllabus and classroom expectations.

I don't want to come across like I don't think classroom expectations or procedures are important, I believe that they are, however the very first day of class should leave the students excited to learn and discover. There will be time for going over procedural stuff and I believe that how the teacher manages the classroom actively creates an environment that is conducive to learning and respect much more than a poster on the wall.

Engaging Instruction - Lesson Plan Structure

Planning for Instruction

Last week I blogged about planning for units and lesson with some research supporting effective lesson plan development. This week I go into the components of a great lesson plan.

 

Why do we plan? 

When the lesson is premeditated, it is more likely to be sensible, complete and in a logical sequence. The learners will then be more likely to be engaged and learn. It encourages the teacher to be clear about the expectations of the unit, the content that is to be taught, and how it will be taught.

This is the basic structure of a lesson plan:

Outline of Plan for Instruction

1. Unit (Topic) of Instruction: This is basically just the title of the lesson
2. Situation: Thinking about the relevance of the information to the learner. Have some of the students had experiences with the content? What are the needs of the community?
3. Instructional Objectives: What the learners should be able to do after the lesson is delivered. These are sort of the milestones that guide you throughout the unit and form the basis for evaluation. This is where you, as a teacher need to think about the domains and modalities of learning (Domains = Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor; Modalities = Visual, Audible, and Kinesthetic)
4. Interest Approach: This is where you “hook” the learners interest and encourage them to have a desire to learn the content. Here is a link to an article published in the Journal of Agriculture Education that studied the effects of using an interest approach in a classroom. Although there was no difference in knowledge or attitudes, the interest approach increased student engagement.
5. Group Objectives: The teacher guides the students in developing learning goals. What to the students see as important to learn? This helps students become self-directed learners
6. Problems and Questions: A true problem is when there is a felt need for solutions to a problem vs a question which really just satisfies a curiosity
7. Plans for Solving Problems: Webb identified “Depths of Knowledge” which aids teachers in encouraging students to learn more deeply and think more critically. Solving problems, acquiring knowledge, and developing skills help learners go beyond just recalling the information and deeper into developing real skills, thinking strategically, and then extending that thinking to other areas of life. See image for a brief explanation of Webb's Depth of Knowledge and Bloom's Taxonomy.
8. Application of Learning: In agriculture education it is easy for students to see the application of what they are learning. But it is more that just understanding the application; seeing the value is just as important.
9. References and Teaching Aids: This is simply a list of resources that you use in developing the lessons
10. Evaluation Procedures: Ensuring that the students learned what you had intended them to learn (think back to the instructional objectives) is essential. Developing formative and summative assessments that are effective at elucidating the knowledge level of the learners requires thought and preparation. .

The lesson should be focused on the areas of significant learning and the teacher should always strive to encourage the learners to think deeply about the knowledge and skills that they are acquiring. 

It seems like a lot at first, but soon it will become second nature (at least that is what I am telling myself now).

How do we design and plan instruction?

The key to being an effective teacher is to plan like a boss. It takes a lot of thought and effort to ensure that the course or unit is designed so that the students understand what they are learning and why it is important.

A key resource for designing lessons is the book, "Understanding by Design" by Wiggins and McTighe (2005). In the book they outline seven tenets of the design philosophy. The fourth tenet is that, "Effective curriculum is planned backward from long-term, desired results through a three-stage process (Desired Results, Evidence, and Learning Plan). So they way to look at planning the curriculum is what you want the students to know and what skills they should develop at the end of the course and then work backward from there to determine how they will get there.








To me this still seems a little daunting, but thankfully Fink (2003) breaks it down even more. Time is of the essence so we as teachers need to recognize that constraint and focus our energy on the knowledge and skills that are essential, or as Fink calls it, significant learning. Fink identified six kinds of significant learning that are not separate but interactive, at least that the goals is that they should be interactive. See the figure to the left.






 So now that we understand a bit more about design process and significant learning we can use a resources that we developed by Benjamin Bloom that is referred Bloom's Taxonomy. Basically, it describes a hierarchy of cognitive function.

The purpose is to help teachers design lessons that require students to use higher levels of cognitive function; to not just be able to regurgitate information, but to truly understand the material and be able to use it. From there the learner should be able to take what they have learned, break it down and increase their learning as the apply the knowledge in different contexts. See this article for more information about Bloom's Taxonomy and how it can be used in designing and planning effective learning experiences. Also, West Virginia University created an interactive circle diagram of Bloom's Taxonomy that is worth checking out.

Personal Reflection:

I feel a bit overwhelmed with information. There is so much research out there and I want to soak it all up, but there is so much! Thinking about all that I am reading and putting it together to help me develop as a new teacher will be a long journey for me, but I'm excited about for the day when I can have a strong grip on the basics and start to refine my techniques and become an increasingly effective teacher.