K. Janae's High Five - Cultivating a Culture of Curiosity

I long for my classroom to be a place of discovery. 

Discovering career opportunities, passions, relationships, abilities, leadership, potential. 

As teachers, we ideally want to be engaging. We want our students to want to be in our class - what if our class is the only reason that our students even come to school?! A fantastic way to add variability to the classroom is through inquiry-based instruction.

One of my favorite definitions of inquiry-based instruction is this one... 

Three cheers for student-centered learning environments!

There are five steps to the inquiry process. Hence, this week's High Five: Learning Through Inquiry.

1. Question
1. This is like the signal word of a direction set. This is the question that gets the gears grinding, that triggers the thoughts and explodes into exploration. So for example, students walk into the room and see two soybean plant samples. Why does sample A seem to be growing faster then sample B?
2. Investigate
1. Now we put our detective hats on. We get out the magnifying glasses, the yellow steno notebooks and trench coats. Using some previous knowledge, students run tests, monitor field and growth conditions and keep track of results.  
3. Use Evidence to Describe, Explain & Predict
1. Now, a few days later, like true researchers students will dig deeper and evaluate the data they have collected. They will rule out collected information that does not lead them closer to a solution and use other information to predict other causes
4. PLOT TWIST! 
1. In a really successful inquiry-based learning environment, steps 2 and 3 would keep happening until students reach a more solidified solution.
5. Connect Evidence to Knowledge
1. And this is where all the magic comes together! It's the ah-ha moment, where students discovery and curiosity leads them to a solution as to why plant sample A was growing faster then sample B.
6. Share Findings
1. This has been a learning process. It's important to share and celebrate what your students have discovered, uncovered and created. It's also crucial to reflect on the learning process. Do your students understand why they explored the difference in growth in the soybean plants? What new skills and knowledge did they gain from this experience?

**NOTE: The teacher did nothing throughout those five steps. The process happens because students are performing each of those steps. The teacher prepares the initial question, and follows students throughout the process asking guiding questions like "how do you know that?" "can you tell me more?" or "but WHY do you think that?"

Here's another cool resource that I thought tied nicely into the inquiry process!

Simply put, my students will be the ones that solve world hunger, cure cancer, preserve natural resources. I have to cultivate a culture of curiosity in my classroom. 

Simply put, I want my students to be life-long learners. I mean they have to be if their going to save up natural resources, produce a cure for cancer and feed the world! I want to use inquiry-based instruction so I can teach my students to learn to learn - a skill that will last them a lifetime!

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

#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 - 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

K. Janae's High Five - Sometimes they tell us to THINK?!

I know you can hardly even believe it. Professors?! Telling their students to THINK?! Better yet, professors telling their students to think OUTSIDE the box?! When pigs fly...

You see, outside of our boxes and outside of our comfort zones, that's where all the good stuff is. That's where the life and the learning and the growth is. 

Outside the box.

#psuaged16 was called to think way outside of the box in preparation for the 2nd annual #TeachAgGenius Hour.  What do we want to learn more about, where do we want to go from here, how can we implement this? Basically, we are not about doing it the same way forever.

Consider this my official call "for advice and opinions from all of you way smarter and experienced than me." So here's what I'm thinking about. Here's what gets my gears rolling. What do you think about my efforts to throw myself outside of the traditional "thinking box?"

1. Creative Classroom Workspaces (like this example)
2. Interactive Notebooks (but digital!)
3. Web-based Assessment Platforms (to use in a 1-to-1 setting... my recent discovery is ExitTicket)
4. Classroom Twitter Account
5. Grit & My Students (edutopia again, for the win!)

Simply put, I am asking for your help. What inspires you? When you think outside of the box, where do you land? Tell me all about it!

Simply put, let's push ourselves outside of "what we know" because that's where the good stuff is. In the words of the ever-successful Henry Ford, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." 

Here's to the next big thing, K. Janae