#TeachAgChat the Teac{HERR} Way!

We're all about this cool thing called PLN's here with #psuaged16. And by PLN I mean Professional Learning Network. As future educators, who are we to stop learning?! We owe it to our students to stay relevant, stay engaged  and stay improving.

I do not think it is coincidental that this infographic here also includes the importance of talking to "thought leaders" directly through various social media platforms like Twitter and that we are asked to lead a weekly twitter chat as a cohort on a topic that interests us.

I count myself privileged to have gotten to rock out the latest #TeachAgChat with my peers Jenna Timmons (@jitimmons) and Olivia Murphy-Sweet (@OSweetMurph). We discussed the "opportunities and challenges with technology regarding school based agriculture education."

For a first time twitter chat host, I was quite pleased with our results. We had 39 participants, 469 tweets and 306, 837 impressions.

I loved watching our guests enthusiastically discuss some awesome resources, explore unique ways to implement technology in the classroom and connect tech to 21st Century Skills. You can catch a glimpse at the questions we asked here.

To see some of the highlights from our #TeachAgChat, you can view our storify here.

Looking forward, here's a few thoughts for my peers, the future hosts of the #TeachAgChat...

• Think carefully about the timing of your questions. I would argue that we had too many questions, I think it was hard for participants to follow along because it was moving so quickly and they were having some great dialogue about previous questions.
• Actively engage with participants. Greet them as soon as the log in, comment, provide feedback and further resources, "call them out," ask follow up questions and thank them for their time. 
• Introduce your experts so that participants know who they are. Ask them to bring their own resources and let them provide follow up and clarification to questions. We had some super knowledgable and passionate individuals, maximize their expertise!
• Advertise your chat on like-type twitter chats. Since our topic was very centered around educational technology, we should have been advertising our #TeachAgChat on similar twitter conversations like #edchat, #edtechchat, etc. This way would could have conversed with experts outside of the agriculture education field. 

Join in on Thursday, November 5th at 8pm EST to chat about "integrating place-based environmental education in school-based agricultural education to improve environmental literacy." 

Simply put, twitter chats are pretty sweet way to expand your professional learning community, to become refueled and excited about the future of agriculture education.

Simply put, I'm thankful for innovative instructors who push us outside of our comfort zones for the sake of our professional well-being.

Catch you on the next #TeachAgChat, K. Janae

K. Janae's High Five - How do we know they got it?

You plan, plan, plan. You create this engaging lessons and design sweet supplemental materials and labs. You call guest speakers, show video clips, get your hands dirty. But how do you know they got it?! We assess. We write multiple choice questions and draft task sheets. We count participation points and mark-up public speaking manuscripts. 

I knocked out a High Five this week with Five Ways to Assess students. Five ways to ensure that they're getting it.

1. Check for Understanding

• Formative Assessment - let's hit the pause button here for a hot second and make sure everyone's on the same page. Because I am doing me student teaching at a school that is one-to-one I am interested in ways to check for understanding digitally. I love this infographic and its digital (and non-digital) formative assessment recommendations.

2. Student Portfolios

• In agriculture education, we have the privilege of teaching in uniquely designed classrooms. Someday's it is a room with four walls and desks, somedays its a chemistry lab, a greenhouse, a field, an agribusiness, a welding shop, you get the point. What about assessing students experiential learning through the format of student portfolios. Not only does this allow students to see how far they come in a marking period or semester, but also provides them with a compilation of projects to show their skills to a future employer. Application, application, application!

3. Peer-Assessment

• Let's create a classroom culture where our students feel comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism from their peers. I want my classroom to be an environment of respect where my students constantly work to build each other up and make each other next time. I think peer-assessment can be more effective than shared rubrics. What if we used our strong students to help coach weaker students? 

4. Self-Assessment

• Reflection. Growth Mindset. How well did I do? What will make me better for next time? Who said the teacher was the only one who had to do the evaluating of students work? Self-assessment can be a powerful tool to give students ownership of their own progress. Here's some great questions to guide students to high levels of thinking in self-assessment and reflection.

5. Backwards Design. 

• In efforts to make assessments most meaningful and effective, it's important to include them in key parts of backwards design planning. This video talks about assessment done in ways to develop rigor in students, but makes a really awesome point about asking "how will I know?" So how will I know everything for my summative unit assessment? 

• Major Assessments > Intermediate Assessments or Check-Ins > Activities

Simply put, as educators let's ask ourselves, are our assessments authentic? Are the tests, projects and presentations really telling us if our students "got it"?

Simply put, I don't want to assess my students just to assess. I'm not about teaching to the test. I'm about teaching to create connections and dig deeper.

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae

The Teac{HERR} Way - But Why?!

I am all about developing my students into the best version of themselves they can be. Even more than that, I'm about pushing my students. Pushing them to want to explore and discover and really use that incredible mind the Lord blessed them with. I want my classroom to be more this learning environment that is different that all other classes my students have had. I want my classroom to be a critical thinking factory.


Our contextual lab for this week helped me develop the skills to do just that. We dove into Problem-Based Learning this week, and like before, I'll share my Gems (the good stuff), Opps (areas where I need to work on) and my Targets (my goals for next time). My three targets for this lab were to Probing Questions, Be Purposeful and Explain Reasoning, Transitions. I'm sensing growth in some areas, but am fully aware that I've still got plenty of work to do.

Gems - 

• Probing Questions. It became quite clear that problem based learning is all about the questions asked. I think some of my best questions asked were ones I didn't plan for. Not only did I find that questions did well at helping me gauge where my students were at in the problem solving process, it also is great for pushing them to dig deeper.
• Check-Ins. My lesson was designed with a lot of small group work this time around. Watching back on my lab, I realized the true power of the individualized check-in's I did with each small group. Not only did it give me opportunities to clarify or help keep the group on task, it allowed me to ask some different questions to push the students to think at a deeper level.
• Class Practices. Again, sometimes the best stuff in a lesson comes out unplanned. I was impressed with the way my student was formatting his answer so I gave him a quick shout-out for his great work and asked the class to make this a "class practice." I want my students to play a role in helping to develop our classroom culture, using their current positive actions do so could be quite successful. 

Opps - 

• Variability. Typically, I consider variability one of my biggest strengths in the classroom. I love changing it up; keeping things in the classroom interesting. But I found that difficult for me to do in this lab. I was proud of my instruction materials and the design of my lesson, but wasn't satisfied with the fact that I didn't try to teach to every learning modality better.
• Directions - I think it goes without saying that direction sets are a huge struggle. I feel confident in saying that I've tried to be extra intention in planning for giving directions, and that's paid off. I feel like I've grown there. But I know there is still room for improvement, especially in efforts to be transparent with my students, so directions will re-appear in my Targets for this week.
• Stress. Stress the importance of the lesson, the importance of the problem and the importance of my students being the ones who must determine a solution. This opportunity for improvement directly relates to key concepts in problem-based learning. For PBL to be most successful, I have to create a felt-need as soon as my students walk in the door.

Targets - 

• Teach for the Modalities. I failed here this week, I have to be intentional about ensuring that I am giving due time to all my learners - auditory, visual and kinesthetic. For sure, some lessons this will be much harder to do than others, but I owe it to them.
• Direction Follow-Ups. I was given some great advice for improving my direction sets... "follow up verbal directions with written directions." Though this may not always be necessary, I am definitely going to give it a shot to hopefully help my students be most successful with the task at hand.
• Feedback and Revision. For the next time I implement PBL in my classroom, I want to be sure there's time set aside in the process for feedback and revision for the students solutions. I didn't have my lesson written for this and looking back now, it's evident how much more in-depth the solutions could have been.

Simply put, let's ask more hard questions of our students. Let's keep asking them why. 

Simply put, I want cultivate collaborators and critical thinkers in my classroom. 

Until Next Time, K. Janae

K. Janae's High Five - Open-Ended Learners

I want my classroom to be future-oriented and career-driven. That means we need application and discovery and failures and successes and room to make messes. All of that sounds like a recipe for Project-Based Learning.

I could have given you a "high ten" of all the great things about project-based learning and inquiry in the classroom, but for the sake of time, here's K. Janae's High Five on Project-Based Learning...

1. 21st Century Skills

• Project-based learning very naturally develops 21st Century Skills in its participants. Quite clearly, project-based learning enhances problem-solving and other Life and Career Skills. This teaching method also cultivates collaboration, technological, communication and other incredibly valuable and marketable 21st Century Skills that I want to see my students gain from my classroom.

2. Use and Need for Effective Questioning

• My last High Five discussed five points reflecting my readings on effective questioning, I found it interesting that much of this weeks reading credits a lot of project-based learning success to asking the right questions. Questioning can help strategically scaffold throughout the project-based learning process. Questioning can help make connections to real-life applications both in and outside of the content area. Questioning can help facilitate reflection and revision throughout the learning process.

3. Student Voice and Choice

• I love that project-based and inquiry based learning give my students total ownership on their learning experience. I love that it swings doors wide open for hands-on application, a concept that agricultural education classes do quite well, in my opinion. The discovery that happens in these instructional methods breeds student voice and student choice; I want for my students to feel as though they did the learning all by themselves. How exciting?!

4. Keep It In Context

• Project-based learning really only works when its context of what's being taught. Am I connecting the project directly to a real-life application or situation that my students will use down the road? This can be accomplished by aligning the process with goals, or essentially learning objectives. These goals can, and probably should be, student designed, in efforts to give the most ownership to the learning process. 

5. Am I Being Purposeful?

• There is a difference between doing projects and doing project-based learning. Quite simply, we can't just do the assignment to do the assignment. There should be no designing posters to design posters or PowerPoints for the sake of PowerPoints. The completion of the project should require that students are learning the material presented. 

Edutopia sums up Project-Based Learning well in this clip... (even if they kind of snagged my "high five" tagline)

Simply put, let's get our students to start thinking open-ended. Let's get our students to ask "what creates change?"

Simply put, I want my students to discover and apply and inquire in my classroom. 

A High Five From You to Me, K. Janae

The Teac{HERR} Way - Through This Door

Through this door pass many dynamite PA FFA Chapter Sentinels!

I count myself privileged to get the chance to spend a day helping develop better chapter officers; to get the chance to get students excited about their leadership roles and ways that they will serve their chapter. 

With the help of two rockstar shadow teachers, I helped 14 PA FFA Chapter Sentinels develop skills in the areas of ...

Opening Ceremonies

Roles of a Chapter Sentinel

Successful arrangement of a meeting room

Self confidence

Conversation starters

Chapter recruitment

Typically, The Teac{HERR} Way is post where I reflect on my contextual lab experiences. This time around I am going to reflect on my workshop at Fall Leadership Conference. Like normal, I'll share my Gems (the good stuff), Opps (areas where I need to work on) and my Targets (my goals for next time).
Gems-

• Check-points. We used these as brain breaks for our Sentinels. After completing a few learning objectives, we paused and revisited what we had done and was coming next. But first, we took some time to get the wiggles out with some ice breaker activities like the ever-popular (and slightly competitive) human table.
• Variability. Motions to opening ceremonies, life-sized 'Memory,' role-playing, the human table... The list goes on, I tried to be intentional about consistently changing up the activities so that the 2 1/2 workshop didn't feel nearly that long.
• Engaging Environment. We started out a little slow and groggy but it didn't take long for the Sentinels to understand that my team was all about making this learning fun and rememberable. 

Opps-

• Conversation. We spent a portion of time talking about five really great questions to use when striking up a conversation with somebody new. My learner satisfaction forms revealed that this activity was super popular with the Sentinels, I wish we could have spent more time on that activity.
• Take-home. I did not prepare to send the Sentinels home with any review sheet, prize, etc. and looking back I wish I would have made up a card with the top five questions for conversation that I discussed earlier, especially seeing how that was such a popular activity.
• Review. I did not do a good job at designing an effective wrap-up activity for this workshop. A huge shout-out to my teammates for their creativity and willingness to work with me on the fly as we wrapped up with some of the extra minutes we had left over. 

Targets-

• Check-points. This is strategy I don't typically use when I'm facilitating, but I found that it played a huge role in keeping my students engaged. There is a lot of power in reviewing where we've been and where we're going. This is strategy I want to aim to use in my classroom.
• Purposeful Reflection. Similar to check points, but on a more comprehensive level, I am continuing to discover the incredible power in leading my students through purposeful reflection at the end of the day. It's good for them to think back at what was covered and equally as good for me to see what they found as most impactful.

Simply put, It is always a good day when you get the chance to get back in a room surrounded by the blue corduroy.

Simply put, I just really love FFA members and am so very excited someday get to serve them as an advisor.

Until Next Time, K. Janae

K. Janae's High Five - Excuse me, I have a question.

You mean to tell me there's a right way and a wrong way to ask a question?

Better yet, you mean to tell me that I can ask questions that will stretch my students thinking beyond their normal capacity, questions that will help develop further interest and critical thinking skills?

Yes, yes I do. Here's my high five of questions all about questions. (See what I did there?!)

1. Who?

• Who asks questions? Not just me. As the facilitator of learning, I play a pivotal role in asking the right questions at the right times. I will use questions to lead and to assess, but I'm not the only one who should ask the questions. In fact, I want to create a classroom environment where questions are frequent and welcome; a room where we leave without questions. What if we trained our students to ask questions at higher levels of thinking? 

2. What?

• What kinds of questions do I ask? Questions don't simply need to serve the purpose of assessing. I want to ask questions that cultivate thinking. Questions can solicit direct responses, like a yes or no. Questions can be rhetorical and stimulate thought process without a necessary thought process. Questions can be used to refocus or rephrase. The kinds of questions I ask are quite simply endless, the real question is if that question was effective.

3. Where?

• Where can I ask questions? Quite simply, you can ask them anywhere. Cornell University suggests that questions can be used in a variety of contexts, such as discussions, small-groups and writing activities. Questions can be used as a method of assessment in open or closed form, multiple choice and matching. 

4. When?

• When is it appropriate to ask questions? Not surprisingly, questioning does have an appropriate time and place. In order for questions to be most effective, they must be strategically placed to help connect content, review, assess or dig deeper. As a teacher, time is of the essence. Intentional use of learning time is crucial, so it is important to not waste time asking when we should be telling, or falling into the "question trap" as this article explores.

5. How?

• How do I design better questions? Cornell University gives an extensive list of ideas to design more effective questions, (here) but I especially like their recommendation to be mindful of the day's learning objectives when designing questions. When I am consistently aligning to what I want my students to know by the end of the class, I can be sure to have questions strategically placed that check for understanding, review what was just presented and make connections to content learned elsewhere.

Simply put, I want to be an educator who is an effective user of probing questions; calling my students to think deeper and make connects as frequently as possible. 

Simply put, what questions are there? ;)

Here's a High Five from You to Me, K. Janae