Week 5 Overview

PA's Horse Racing Industry is HUGE!

What a crazy winter this has been! It was a three day teaching week, with one day even having a two-hour delay. This type of weather has made it difficult for all teachers, but I am especially challenged with connecting concepts with students with all these gap days and shortened periods, as well as general planning difficulties. That was one of my biggest challenges in general this week: planning appropriately! I have soooo much planned everyday and for the week and then I feel like we are moving so slow, although I do know that it is better to have fuller student understanding than cover a broader range of topics.

MONDAY:

• ·         AnSci- Work day for their Horse Sport Projects. They are working in pairs to create an iMovie of the horse sport of their choice. The students did make progress, but I was not able to answer all of their technical problems. I was very frustrated with this as the instructor and spent time afterwards throughout the day seeking help of other faculty in the school to REALLY figure these iMovie questions out.
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• ·         Ag Enviro- Work day for their Air Pollution Projects. They each chose an air pollutant source and made a powerpoint on their topic. This went great! I was really happy with what they turned in. I also loved using Edmodo to assign the project and digitally ‘collect’ their assignment.

TUESDAY:

• ·         AnSci- We continued with the overview of equine industry and how it connects to agriculture. We also spent a lot of time learning about PA’s horse racing industry.
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• ·         Ag Enviro- We went out to the lab to set up and begin our acid rain lab that we will be observing for the next two weeks. I divided the class into assigned four groups. There were four plants, each receiving watering with a different pH. Students were to design a chart to test the pH of the liquid for each plant, take plant observations, and make a hypothesis of what will happen to each plant. Each group rotated through the four plants. For the first period, it was great! The second session had some dishonesty with groups, as I found too many friends working with friends. I had to address this issue.

WEDNESDAY:

• ·         AnSci- What a great class session!! We were learning horse parts, and with this very quite class, I was able to get them awake and having a ton of fun! It was a very interactive class and I even had them sit on top of their desks. This idea literally blew their mind, but it was perfect for the activity.
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• ·         Ag Enviro- This was a catch up day to finish off air pollution. I used a lot of short YouTube clips which kept them engaged and stirred up some good discussion afterwards. Also I gave them a practice quiz that they were not too fond of, but I think it was good for them to check their understanding. I struggle with handling a lot of off-topic questions in my second session class. I’m still trying to figure out how to handle this.