Week 12 investment Fall 2021

The Power of Inquiry 

This past week #PSUAgEd22 and fellow PA agriculture educators had the opportunity to participate in the 2021 PA Inquiry Institute with Jessica N Rustin Grundy, National Agriscience Teacher of the year. During this professional development event, we looked at ways we can utilize inquiry in our future classrooms and focused on ways to adjust our instruction to be more learner focused rather than educator focused. 

2 Things I liked About This Experience

1. Something that stood out to me during this experience was when we did an activity where we dissection flowers and were tasked with identifying the different parts of our flower. What stood out to me during this activity was that Ms. Grundy did not give every student a complete flower. What this meant was not every student could identify all the parts of the flower because some didn't have it. I really liked this aspect of the activity because it engaged me more and made me question/ realize the differences between many flowers. Looking overall, I think this strategy could be applied to many subjects to encourage creative student thinking.  
2. Another thing I liked about this experience was the bird beak activity. This activity was appealing to me for many reasons, the biggest being that I could easily adapt it to suit a plethora of topics, such as evolution or populations. This activity felt like a nice balance between getting students moving and avoiding total chaos in the classroom. Additionally, this activity encompassed many different skills and potential career connections which administration always loves to see.

1 Thing I Loved About This Experience 

1. Something I LOVED about this experience was that I never felt bored. We moved around the room frequently and did different types of activities that kept me constantly engaged. Striving to create this kind of engagement in my future classroom sits pretty high on my priority list so using methods from this workshop is a MSUT. 

A Literacy Strategy 

    A literacy strategy I might use with my students is having them annotate the text. Using strategies like color coded marking and highlighters, I can help encourage students to make their own understandings and connections