PART II:

In my third visit to the classroom, the environment remained the same as my last few visits, continuing to reflect a positive classroom culture. However, this time all of the students participated in a reflective math worksheet to reinforce their learning. In terms of the environment, both the morning announcements and the initial instruction from the teacher remained the same, providing lose guidelines and freedom to allow the students to invest in their own learning. Through this visit, the admiration that the students had for their teacher, Mrs. Dowless, became more evident than it had before, with students bring her gifts and showing an increased level of satisfaction when interacting with her. Additionally, the class worked on a math worksheet that involved reflection on concepts that they had learned that last month. That activity clearly reflected the elements of project design in Boss’ introduction of Project-based Teaching. Specifically, these students confronted challenging problems through the last month of curriculum, learning the concept of plotting points on a graph. And then, through the design of this worksheet, the students were offered the opportunities to reflect on the content that they had learned, which helps conceptual retention as referred to in Boss Chapter 2.Through this activity, my partner and I assisted the students in navigating through the areas they struggled with. For the most part, the students understood what they were doing, however, there were a few students who struggle that I attempted to help. They were fairly unresponsive when I approached them, and it seemed like the reason was that they did not want their classmates to think that they were not smart. That aspect of the experience intrigued me since in reflection I would have done the same thing at time. Also, as the teacher in that situation, it is a hard situation to confront because you want the student to remain comfortable, but you also want to assist them. I gained a unique perspective through that interaction and discovered a roadblock that I did not necessarily know how to confront effectively.

PART II:

Through my initial three class visits, I have collected some solid information on potential learning activities that I could implement that relate to my team unit. Both of my activities involve the two EL principles of Self-Discovery and Solitude and Reflection. For starter, I decided that I would pursue health as a subject of learning since, after my first visit, the students asked my partner and I multiple questions for about the whole class period with the majority referring to our own healthy lifestyle. Clearly, the students saw VMI cadets as an example for a healthy lifestyle and the specific questions asked showed that the students must be interest in health. So, I decided to provide them an opportunity to learn about the pros and cons of their diets and the exercising habits. After that, through discussion I would offer them tips and strategies to navigate their environment more effectively in order to maximize their health. Specifically, the activity would involve each student copying down their diets from the last 24 hours, sorting them into meals and snacks. From their I they would circle all of the vegetables, fruits, meats and healthy grains that they had listed. After that, they would write down everything that is not circled in a separate list. Through that list development, I would address the issues with the foods not circled, which are mostly likely going to be sweets or extra food that they don’t need. Through explaining how they could exchange those calories, going from the non-circled food to the circled food instead, and then explain how that would drastically change their health. That activity would address diet, but then I would also like to implement tips and strategies for physical exercise. Specifically, stressing the importance of exercise and how to implement it into a busy lifestyle through again having the students copy down their weekly exercise habits and discuss them. Both of these activities offer a chance to collaborate in small groups and as a class to figure out optimal ways to go about both diet and exercise. And to finish off these activities, after the students gain a solid understanding of implementing a healthy lifestyle in their own lives, in groups they will develop proposals, for either the city of Lexington or the principle of Maury River school, that address an aspect of the community or school that needs to be improved in order to promote healthy lifestyles.

Part One: Our third visit to our class was our most recent and the first that we were able to participate in an all be it small way, leading a discussion. The reason I feel that this is the case is because as a teacher who knows what they want, it is hard to make room for others. Our class unlike many of the others, has a very set curriculum that has to be followed so it can be hard to be accommodating. In our third visit we interviewed the students to see what they had thought about nest fest, their wishes, wonders, and what they liked about it. It felt more like I was just being a mouthpiece for a conversation that was really happening between the teacher and the students, but I was able to make the most of it. I would encourage the students to specify exactly what they meant and give as much detail as possible. I felt that this would give better feedback for future nest fests. I would also write down what the students were saying. This also gave me another avenue to benefit future nest fests in that I was trying to capture the essence of what they were saying, by making sense of their thoughts rather than just writing down exactly what they said. What we were doing was reflective of the standards that we went over in class. All of the answers that we collected went on a poster board in a manner to celebrate all of the individual responses and validate their answers.

Part Two: My idea for what the students should do for an activity would be an application of what they have learned at nest fest and more importantly to harness the drive for the environment the conference has instilled. Our proposed unit involves a project that would take several weeks to complete and then a final presentation in front of peers and then in front of school administrators. I think a good way to do this would be to have students build the confidence and courage for such a large undertaking they should start small with their nest fest observations. This would take the shape of students taking the observations they discussed in small groups and standing in front of the class to share the. What this would do in addition to preparing them for our proposed unit would be to meet several of the EL principles. Principles such as student-engaged assessment- cultivating a culture of engagement and achievement as their opinions and wished would be validated by the platform they are given to share them. It would also demonstrate leadership-fostering a cohesive school vision as students would be working together towards a common vision of improving nest fest for future Eagle Eco-Council students.

During my time in the classroom, I was able to participate in the third visit that we conducted at Rockbridge County High School in Mr. Simms’ class. The participation was in an assignment based on eugenics, a form of genetic modification that allows a child’s parents to pick what genes that they want the child to have before they are born or to find out what kinds of diseases they could have a high risk of so they can make the choice to have children or not. I and Ron were placed into a group together and were given the chance to work on a small piece of paper on what aspects of being human we thought were genetic or environmental in the development of a child’s brain and being. Things like appearance, attractiveness, OCD, autism, criminal tendencies, alcoholism, etc. were posted on the form and we were required to fill them out to the best of our knowledge on the subject and then explain why we thought this way in the class discussion that followed. The class discussion was laid back, as we have seen from many other class visits, and allowed for students to speak, debate, and defend their points and why they would choose to have a child or not. I personally thought that this was an effective way of teaching the subject as it was able to get the students fully involved and many of them seemed to be more than fully invested in the subject matter by the end of the class period.

From what we have collected over the past three visits to Mr. Simms’ class, it has become evident that there is an extremely effective way of teaching that I never saw in my time in high school or even in my first few years of college. The ability to teach a subject through classwide research and discussion was something unheard of in the environment that I came from where the factory-like lecture was king and that was the only way of teaching a subject to the students. After seeing how Mr. Simms runs his class and treats his students, it has shown myself that the most effective way to teach the lesson plan that Ron and I wish to do is to involve the class fully in the discovery and research of the topics and to let them voice their opinions on the minor subjects that come up in the lesson. Not only would this allow for the students to gain a deeper grasp on the subject, but this would also allow for the EL Principles of the Responsibility for Learning and Collaboration and Competition to be met. By creating a group based final project for the section, Ron and I would allow the students to compete with their ideas on the subject and to take responsibility for their learning by having them effectively research and present the subject as a group.

During my third participatory classroom visit, the students were tasked with compiling all of their data from their research experiment at the middle school. Specifically, they were working on putting their data onto a poster using two different types of graphs. Mrs. Donahue informed us that the students were having trouble concentrating, which was obvious as soon as we stepped in the class. To help with this, my partner, Brad, and I roamed around the classroom helping the students with their work. My partner and I had a strong leadership role in doing this because the students turned to us for help when they encountered difficulties. Additionally, there was one group of three students that spent the majority of their time talking and joking rather than doing their work. Brad and I stepped in and practically annoyed them to the point where the only way they could get us to leave was to do their work. Overall, this classroom activity exemplified the EL principle Student-Engaged Assessment, because the students were doing their own research and data compilations, and they had to become the leaders of their own learning.

My invented idea for a learning activity for the class is a group presentation on a selected environmental issue. Students will be split into groups of two, and they will then choose an issue such as single use plastics to discuss. This will be an effective activity because they will have to conduct their own research on their selected environmental topic, and they will have to present possible solutions to the class. This activity incorporates the EL principle Collaboration and Competition because students will be working in groups to conduct their research and do their presentations. This activity will also be useful because Mrs. Donahue wants Brad and I to give a brief lesson about public speaking, so they will have to incorporate what we teach them into their presentations.

Being able to instruct our own mini lesson on participation day gave me a lot of insight on what the role of a teacher fully felt like. Instead of just helping students with their own work, Chris and I led a presentation on public speaking. While overall public speaking is an important trait to have, it directly impacted their current science project presentations. To begin, the powerpoint we presented took strategies from chapter 2 “Design and Plan” in order to grasp the attention of the class. This strategy consisted of connecting the project to popular culture and listening to responses. We gave an example of a person exhibiting good public speaking skills and one showing bad skills. By using President Obama’s image, it presented a familiar face that could gain more attention from the students. The goal of this slide was to allow students to note what they saw within the images. This reflection exercise proved the students already had a basic knowledge of good public speaking characteristics. The biggest takeaway that I got from the our presentation was, will students actually implement what they have learned? At the very end of the powerpoint, we chose two students to practice the five focal points given during the presentation. This practice included stating their name and two fun facts. Chris and I were looking for good posture, inflection, confidence, pace, and eye contact. I initially thought of this so students could fully grasp the information we delivered to them. This idea derived from chapter 7 “Engage and Coach” because it is important for teachers to focus on teaching moments. By allowing the students to give their own demonstration of what they learned, it allowed for the class to add corrections. I thought it was important for the class to comment on the volunteer’s performance not just us as teachers.

Moving from our participation session into planning our own learning activity, the concept I wanted to focus on was the usage of good public speaking. I think it is important to build off of the foundation Chris and I have already built. Moreover, there was a feeling within me that if the student didn’t practice the points we gave them, they wouldn’t adopt them. Because of this, we chose our two disciplinary domains to be English and Science. This also made sense because they were already giving presentations for their current science project, so it will only be beneficial to them. The next step in the process was to brainstorm ideas that would allow students to gain knowledge from a project-based learning assignment, but also enjoy what they were doing. Since the class was already learning about the different kingdoms, I thought it would be interesting to continue on one of them. Reflecting back to my sixth grade science class, I remember we did a project on insects and this fix within the animal kingdom. To ensure some authenticity from chapter 2 ‘Design and Plan” I wanted to make sure students conducted a good amount of research to add onto the English portion of the project. By allowing students to capture insects, research them, and present their findings, I think many educational areas will be covered

Shamus Bartmess

On my 2nd visit to Mrs. Leadbetter’s classroom, I had the privilege of helping the high school students start on their journey into the realm of research papers. From helping them narrow down their ideas to coming up with ways to focus their ideas into a research paper, I was a busy bee. First though, Mrs. Leadbetter split the class up into four different groups and assigned me and Tahvon to 2 of these groups. My group in particular was somewhat challenging because they didn’t understand their assignment. Therefore, as Boss states in chapter four, I had to remove bottlenecks. I had to help the group to understand their assignment in order for me to help them one on one. Therefore, if I couldn’t help one student, he/she was able to get help from their peers until I was able to help said person. Now, from what I saw of their research paper starter assignment, they were supposed to come up with a research topic and state why they were interested in it. This proved challenging because what seemed to be such a simple assignment to me, proved to be anything but that. In order to make this more understandable for the students I had to, as Boss would say it, expand my project management strategy. In other words, I had to help them find ways to work through their projects. They were very broad in their thinking which would lead to a very long paper. They needed to shorten their papers up so I provided tips on how to focus their ideas. One girl is doing her project on the benefits of 21st century agriculture technology. How could I help her focus her ideas though? I did it by providing subtle hints to not just look at technology, but to look at two or three different technologies which farmers use today that benefit them. Such as focusing on GPS and pesticides, and automatic sprinklers. By doing this, she was able to gain ideas about where she is right now, and where she wants to go with this paper. How though will I be able to help them further understand a research paper? 

One idea which I have for helping the students to understand how to write a research paper is to provide them with an example of a paper which I wrote. By doing this, I would show them how I formed a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. What else would need showing in this though? Well, I could always show how to incorporate sources throughout the paper in different ways. Such as, providing a straight up quote. Another option would be to lead into an author’s idea and not directly quoting them but still giving them the credit for their ideas. This is something that I really struggled with in high school and I would help them to figure it out if I am able. After showing how I went through the process of coming up with thesis and topic sentences, I could show them how I like to write my paper. Then come back and fill it in with quotes from the authors which I have already read in order to really back my paper up. But it comes to my attention now that I should tell them to go ahead and read through different sources first. But how to find good, solid sources can be a challenge. I would also put them through a little exercise which would consist of different websites such as .com websites and .edu or .gov and ask them which is the best scholarly source to use. But by doing this I would be able to help them figure out how to find sources, come up with thesis statements, and show them how to incorporate their sources.