2014 FFA Week

As FFA week came to a close, I left the school Friday with my very first FFA shirt proudly sporting the words "Oley Valley FFA" and the sense that the whole school district was reminded about the impacts and accomplishments this FFA Chapter has made on students and their community. After just a short three-day school week, this weekend will be a well-earned refresh time! The officers did an awesome job organizing a spirit week and free t-shirts for all the members to wear. Also, the chapter hung FFA logos all over the school with students' names on them which they could then turn in at lunch for free icecream....that of course went over super well!! The officers also attended the school board meeting to make announcements and hand school board members thank you baskets (filled with donated, local ag products). Finally, the week concluded with a well-attended teacher breakfast Friday morning, and I was thrilled to see a huge crew of FFA members there to help!

Here's how teaching went this week: 

Monday: No School for President's Day

Tuesday: Snow day

Wednesday:

An Sci- Today we review equine parts and then continued to learn about horse conformation. I had a short lecture and then had the students rotate through stations to identify the different conformation faults. It went super well!

Ag Enviro- I am beginning to talk about climate change, but first we are learning about the reasons for different climates around the world. As a class activity, we held the "climate Olympics" which students were put into groups (countries) and were assigned a topic to become experts on and teach their peers in some creative way. We ran out of class time but we will continue tomorrow with this activity. It is taking a whole period longer than I expected, but I like how it's going! Plus both classes are doing well with it!

Thursday:

An Sci- Today we presented the horse sports project and had some great discussions. Other than the initial struggles with iMovie, they turned out very well. We also had some great discussions...until the cockroach walked across the floor...

Ag Enviro- Continuation of Climate Olympics. We also used turn tables and expo markers to learn the Coriolis Effect. The first session loved this. The second session thought it was completely stupid...interesting.

Friday:

An Sci- Today we continued presenting our horse sport projects. I had the students pick their own partners for this project. While this is risky, it worked really well for this class! I also talked about my summer living in Belgium riding for Karen Donckers as she prepared for the London 2012 Olympics. Story time!

Ag Enviro- Today we talked about El Nino. My interest approach involved a student volunteer comparing hot and cold water in two mugs and talking about evaporation. We also had a great discussion about how this effected the US corn prices in 2011 and 2012. It was great! Although my powerpoint was terribly confusing for them, so I completely changed it for the second session and it was much better.