Week 11 of 15: Inquiring About Professional Development

 Last Friday, #PSUAgEd23 had the pleasure of attending the 2022 PA Agriscience Inquiry Institute presented by master teacher Ms. Krista Pontius! We had the opportunity to explore inquiry-based methods of instruction and activities to implement during our student teaching experience. 

 

There was so much learning and excitement packed into our 10 hours together! Our cohort of 12 pre-service teacher candidates had the opportunity to work with 12 agriculture teachers from all around Pennsylvania. I really enjoyed getting to meet new teachers and catch up with some familiar faces. However, the best thing about being paired with an established agriculture teacher was hearing all their ideas about the ways they would implement and change the methods and ideas we were presented to their classrooms. It helped to hear how some of the activities could be connected to other content areas and how we could take it one step further to maximize student learning and engagement. 

 

 

 

Investigating if Double Stuf Oreos really have double the filling!

My favorite activity that we tried at the Inquiry Institute was the Misconceptions in Agriculture activity. For this activity, we were given sheets of paper with a fictitious person's demographics on them. We were given details such as gender, age, location, and some general opinons on topics that get misconstrued in agricutlure, such as GMOs and organic foods. From there, we had to create a hypthesis about our population of people in "If, Then, Because" format. My hypothesis read "If females from rural areas are seeking organic foods, then they must be trying to avoid GMO products, because they are actively looking for organic labeled foods."

 

After we created a hypothesis, we created two research questions and a data table to record our responses. Then, we went around the room surveying each other to see what data we could collect. After we got all of our survey data, we sat down and created a mini research poster reporting our findings! I thought that the poster was the most challenging, because I had to find a succinct way to report my data. It was my first time creating one and I really enjoyed trying it! I think that activities like this are perfect for students beacuse they are analyzing and sythesizing key information, which means true learning is happening! 

 

Just a peek at some of the great supplies and teaching tools I got at the 2022 PA Agriscience Inquiry Institute!

 

 

Something I am excited to take into student teaching with me from the Inquiry Institute are notebook foldables. Notebook foldables go in to interactive notebooks, and are a fun way to have students interact with the content while showing off their creative side, too. They can be used for self quizzing, studying, reenforcing concepts, and learning new material. I would like to try using interactive notebooks and foldables with my agricultural leadership class in the spring because the content I am teaching them would be more engaging and fun if I implemented them in class.

 

 

A special thank you is due to Ms. Krista Pontius, National Association of Agricultural Educators, LabAids, Corteva Agriscience, and The Center for Personnel Professional Development at Penn State! If you would like to learn more about the Agriscience Inquiry Institute, check out this link: https://www.naae.org/profdevelopment/agi2.cfm

 

Thank you for your endless support,

 

Ms. Cusate