With a 220 person FFA Banquet to plan for, the Officer Team, Chapter Members, and us as Advisors have been hard at work for over three weeks. With the banquet last Thursday, it really was a full week...affirming my belief that Ag Teachers ARE super heros! It turned out beautifully, and I was so proud of the hard work everyone put in to prepare for this banquet, especially the officer team! They did fantastic and the opportunity to meet everyone's parents and other community members was wonderful.
We also finalized manuscripts for the Area Speaking CDE coming up this Thursday, and this week will be filled with after-school practices.
Classes went very well this week, and although we didn't have very many large labs, three of the classes had their unit tests. Over the past weeks, I have been able to improve my test making skills and also trying different methods of unit reviews for the students. This past week, I've made different worksheets with review questions and for other classes I had unit outlines. I also tried different review techniques the previous day. I do not particularly like testing the students, as some of them still show their nerves, no matter how well I try to prepare them all! We strive to keep high academic credibility within the Ag Department, so the tests are not always "easy" but we do do our best to make sure the students are fully prepared and that the test is fair.
One activity that I particularly enjoyed doing with my students is using the idea of traits, punnet square, and heritability to build a marshmallow creature in my Ag Biology class (thanks Communities of Practice!). Most really enjoyed this activity. Also, my students have been incredibly fun in this class, as they go along with a lot of my 'creative' ideas and still stay very focused on their tasks. For example, one day we pretended the middle aisle between the desks was a 'run way' and students eagerly did some joking dance or trick as they walked to and from the board to show an example problem. I think I laughed just as much as they did! It was great! Plus they still were able to focus in between when we talked about the examples on the board. :)
banquet week. It has to be one of the most nerve wracking weeks of the year. Ultimately we end up so proud of our officers and students and for the most part we enjoy the banquet. There are times when we cringe during the banquet, but only the advisors know that there was a miscue
ReplyDeleteteaching during banquet week is always a challenge also, so I am glad that you experienced this aspect of being an ag teacher. Having fun while teaching / learning is permitted and helps all of us to really learn.