Week 5 of 15: Well…That was Interesting

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As of this Friday, we are officially 1/3rd of the way through the semester! I can not believe how fast it is going. This week in #AEE412, we learned about how to write objectives for our lesson and unit plans. All the while, we were learning about how to craft the perfect interest approach too. For lab this week, we were tasked with writing a lesson plan with an engaging and effective interest approach.




Killiann and I during my interest approach activity




My lesson that goes with my interest approach is about animal terminology. For the interest approach, I cut out pieces of paper with animal terms on them, such as, “Gilt,” “Cow,” “Bull,” and “Steer.” I went around and had students pick a term with the pieces of paper facing down. I told each student not to look yet, and that when I said, “Go” the student would have two minutes to go around and find others that had the same animal as them. So for example, if two students think that “Cow” and “Steer” go together because they are both cattle, they should stay together in a group


I know from learning about interest approaches that the novel and unexpected are interesting, so I wanted to keep the terms a secret until I said, “Go.” In total, I had the students group together two times, once by what animal they had and then by terms they thought were females and males. They did good!



Almost…too good…



See, our interest approach for this lab was to be 5 to 10 minutes, but we were done in 3 and a half minutes. But, I had 4 students in my lab that all knew the terms. If I tried this interest approach in an actual high school classroom, it would most likely take the students the full 2 minutes to get into their groups each time. Also, some of the groups might be incorrect at first, so I would ask the students why they thought they belonged in that group and give them the opportunity to change groups before moving on to the next prompt. 


The goal of using this interest approach is to get students moving and to have them start trying to make connections about what terms are used to describe animals and why. Overall, I thought that lab went great, but I do wish I could try this with a bigger audience.


As for a general update, I am getting more and more excited as the semester goes on to student teach in the Spring, and we are nearly 1 month away from the National Convention with our cooperating center!





As always, thank you for your endless support,


Ms. Cusate

Comments

  1. Elizabeth HoltrySeptember 23, 2022 at 5:48 PM

    Nickie,
    It sounds like you had such a great interest approach! I'd love to use it in my companion animal class. Your support through this semester means the world to me! Great job this week!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 25, 2022 at 8:59 AM

    Nickie,
    Being one of the students in your lab I am always impressed by the passion you have while teaching. I think your interest approach was a great way to introduce terms without getting the glazed over look you usually get when going over vocab. Also awesome job reflecting on the activity and the logistics of it. Keep killing it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AGmazing GraceSeptember 25, 2022 at 4:09 PM

    I also cannot believe that we are a third of the way, we are SO close to the end! This is a really great idea for an interest approach that gets the students moving and talking with each other! I also wonder how much longer my activities are going to take with an entire class compared to the 4 or 5 cohort members we are practicing on.

    ReplyDelete

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