Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Why be boring? Lets get creative! How interesting can you be?


The moment your students walk in the door it is all upon you how the time in class together is going to go.  This has certainly been proven these last two weeks in our AEE 412 lab.  This week in lab it was all about the interest approach and how we as facilitators are going to get our students hooked from the beginning to be engaged throughout the entirety of our lesson.  Planning and preparation is crucial to a successful hook!  I have to admit I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out what in the heck I was going to do for my interest approach.  My lesson was on what does a safe vs. unsafe agricultural shop look like?  After much thinking I decided to go with using multiple props to turn my classroom into an “unsafe agricultural shop.” 

I felt that my preparation and planning was exceptional and I came ready with multiple props to deliberately drive home my message of what an unsafe shop looks like.  After watching my video I actually felt that it went better than I thought it did!  In the beginning I stuttered a little bit and used umm excessively, but after I got the students up and moving around taking notes I felt like I found my groove.  I also think that from last week to this week I spoke much slower.  This is something I have to keep working on to make sure my clarity of directions is fully understood by my students.  I struggled a little bit as well with keeping one of my students on task who sometimes was goofing off and not allowing others to learn.  Although by the end I think I did a better job and had this student engaged reading objectives for me and allowing for that person to feel like they had a role in my class.  I want for all my students in my classroom to feel like they have a place because they do and that everyone is just as important as the next. 

Overall I am proud of my performance.  I struggled with creating an interest approach, but I think that I did a good job describing what a safe vs. unsafe agricultural shop looks like.  Anytime when students are up an moving I believe they are more observant and on task.  Starting my lesson out with this approach hooks them for the rest of my lesson and gets them wanting to learn more. 

3 comments:

  1. Mason - I enjoyed getting the chance to watch your video this week. It's been cool to read your blogs and get a chance to get a pulse on watching you improve. Your classroom presence is really great, you are engaging and personable. My biggest encouragement to you is to continue to make the most of the minutes your given with your students, ask questions while they're completing simple tasks to help connect material from the bellwork to the following lesson (this is one of my goals to work on, too!) Keep rocking it out, friend! You're going to do great things!

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  2. Mason, so happy to hear the confidence you feel after this lab. You did a good job this morning with the interest approach. I would challenge your thoughts to look ahead into a class of 20 students in a larger shop setting. How does that look? Will there be differences? Your instructions were well stated and the activity flowed nicely. Way to rock it!

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  3. Mason, I enjoy hearing your reflections. I wish I could sit in on one of your labs. I can tell that you have a great presence in front of the classroom and I am sure that you are growing into a great educator with each lab. Keep up the good work!

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