Week 4 - I Believe...

This week turned out to be a really good week! We had a lot of fun and exciting lessons and labs throughout the entire week! We ended the week with a cool soil test lab where students brought in their own soil samples from home and did our own soil tests! I showed them a real example of a soil test from Penn State and then they had to do their own on the same sheet. The results were turning out pretty cool until we ran out of time! We will pick the lab back up on Monday and finish the tests. I can't wait to see what the rest of the results show and what kind of discoveries the students make on their own soil samples!

This week in Ag 1, I started the public speaking unit. As you can imagine, most of the students are not very fond of the unit and have voiced their displeasures. I am trying hard to make it as fun and exciting as possible, but also getting them out of their comfort zones. Each student will have to memorize the FFA Creed and then say it in front of the entire class. It is broken down into a paragraph each week and then the final week, they will have to say the entire creed. This is to not only build their public speaking skills but to also try and listen to those words of "I Believe in the future of agriculture.." Because they are the future and sometimes it can be hard making that connection to students.

While trying to make that connection, on Tuesday we learned about the FFA and history. Trying to really pound in the why we memorize the creed and stand by the FFA. There were 5 stations and each student had to rotate around the shop learning about different parts of the National FFA Organization and history. Each station had a simple sheet of paper with a weblink and QR Code. Connecting the use of technology and instruction is great. Kids are on their phones so much in a day so why not make them learn from them too!

Overall all of the classes for the week turned out really well. We were wrapping up the soils unit this week with a number of cool labs and assignments. It is really cool seeing kids get their hands dirty and controlling their own learning which was this week's goal in the soils unit. We will end the unit on Tuesday of this coming week with a soil erosion lab! Going to try a really cool activity so be sure to read next week's blog to see how it went!

This weekend we had the chance to take 5 kids to Harrisburg for the Agricultural Cooperation Establishment Success (ACES) conference! This has been cool to see the students get involved in leadership activities and to hear the stories from it. It's also been beneficial at looking at how this all works as the role of an advisor. It has turned out to be a great weekend!

Looking ahead, we are starting to put the final pieces together for National FFA Week. Our school does a lot to support the FFA chapter. I am really looking forward to seeing how many people participate in all of the activities we have planned! We put up this bulletin board to start spreading the word throughout the school about all the exciting things that we have planned!

In all, week 4 is in the books and next week we start week 5!! Which means we are a third of the way through student teaching already! Hard to believe but I am so happy to have this opportunity and experience at CASH. It has been incredible so far and I want to keep it that way!