Week 5: What's the Point???

Week 5 was full of surprises, and some interesting learning opportunities,  as I navigated flexible learning days for the first time. Due to weather, the second half of the week was fully online, and in order to keep both of my half groups on track in their courses I had to get a little creative. While online learning days always present unique challenges for student engagement and learning, it is very different when you were planning for in - person and have to make last minute adjustments. 

Some peaks and pits of the past week include:

Peaks: 

1. During the first half of the week I was able to be in person with the students as we worked through an awesome inquiry lab in Vet Science and dove into measurement in Ag Mechanics. The students in both classes worked very hard, and I was very impressed by what we were able to accomplish. 

Ag Mechanics worked hard this week to improve their measurement skills. In addition to working hands-on with multiple measurement tools such as rulers, tape measures, levels and framing squares we also started out our lesson by thinking about what measurement really is and how we apply it in our everyday lives. 

Vet Science 1 started out their digestive system unit strong by completing an inquiry lab, investigating the functions of the mouth (specifically mastication). Each student had to create their own challenge question and hypothesis, run their experiment, collect data and then create a graph to communicate their findings to the class. 

2. Even though our plans changed, and one half group didn't get any in person instruction this week, the students still showed up and put in the work to stay on track for next week. I was so happy to see all the students logging in on during the snow days and making the best of the situation. 

Trying to avoid a simple lecture style for our online days (which are also only half the time of normal day) I worked in some edpuzzle review videos, a matching game that we completed as a class, and had students take time to do their own research on the different tools and materials we will be using next week in lab. 

Pits:

1. While I have prepared lessons to be taught fully online in the past, this week presented my first experience with having to adapt lab lessons last minute into an online format. While I am still happy with what each of my classes achieved during these flexible instruction days, I feel like I could have done better at creating engaging activities. I feel this is something that many teachers are struggling with right now, and I will take what I learned from this week to help me in the future. Some ideas I will incorporate in the future include using nearpod to create class interaction activities, have students research and share their finding with the class by creating a small presentations, or having students use flipgrid to create videos explaining different tools/materials that we will be using in class. 

Reflecting on my lessons from this past week, I realized that communicating the days' objectives clearly to students at the beginning of the class is extremely important. I want my students to be able to stay on task and be motivated throughout any lesson, whether in-person or online. Over the past year, we learned about the importance of aligning our course, unit, and lesson objectives so that we have a clear path to achieving student learning objectives over time. While these daily objectives can be very helpful for teachers to stay on track, it is also extremely important for students to understand what is expected of them and what they are supposed to be working towards. If students cannot understand why we are doing certain activities or learning new knowledge or skills, what's the point? 

Moving forward, I plan to work harder to communicate each lesson's objectives and what I want the students to learn/complete each day. I currently place the daily skill and agenda on the board at the beginning of each class period, but I will be more intentional about explaining what we will be doing and what I want the students to walk away with. I think focusing on this will enhance all of my lessons and help me to maximize the time I have with students. 

Questions:

How do you incorporate more student interaction/engagement into online lessons?

What strategies do you use to communicate your daily learning objectives with students? How do you help them to see the "point" of each activity?