Microteaching with the Pirates

I was excited to be able to teach the Introduction to Ag/Horticulture class from Tuesday thru Thursday. While observing them on Monday, I realised that this class was not the rowdiest bunch of the day; however, it was the LAST class of the day. Keeping their attention instead of having them thinking about the countdown to go home would certainly be one of my main struggles. Another struggle I was going to have was having the students call me "Ms. Sessamen". I did not know that I was going to be teaching students who I used to be in 4-H with, and they obviously knew me by my first name.

This past week, I had the opportunity to observe and microteach at the home of the Pirates, aka Williamsburg Area High School. I spent Monday observing classes with Ms. Royer and Mrs. Gouger to see what we were getting ourselves into over the course of the next three days.

On my first day (Tuesday), we went over the parts of the emblem. We discussed the five symbols of the FFA Emblem and researched their meanings. I ended up having a mishap with the copier earlier that morning, so I was unable to get copies of the worksheet I wanted my students to fill out with each emblem symbol and their meanings. Instead, I had them take a blank sheet of paper and create the worksheet themselves. I think that having them create their own worksheet ended up working out for the better as they demonstrated their ability to follow directions, which they ended up doing pretty well. At the end of the class, I decided to have a little bit of fun and have each student design their own FFA Emblem. How did they do that? With COOKIES of course! We had vanilla wafers, icing, sprinkles, food coloring, and an assortment of items for them to be as creative as they wish. The best part was being able to eat their emblem as the bell rang.

Wednesday consisted of learning about FFA officers and their responsibilities. This was a rather informational lesson with a PowerPoint of each officer position and learning the officer parts. I ended up having a PowerPoint worksheet to ensure that the students were able to follow along during the lecture, and we ended up going over it at the end of class.

On my final day, we had another informational lesson with going over FFA Official Dress and reviewing everything that we went over while I was microteaching with them. We did not have a sample of the entire official dress, but we did have an assortment of ties and a sample of the official jacket. We discussed the "Dos and Don'ts" of FFA Official Dress and had the students select the appropriate attire when it came to ties/scarves (since that is what we had available). We ended my microteaching journey with a review game of everything that we went over that week while I was there. I divided the class into two groups and we had each team show their knowledge in our review game.

Overall, the students were great. I had an exciting group of 8th-10th grade students who seemed to enjoy being in class. I wish, however, that this microteaching experience was offered earlier in the semester (or even in a previous semester) so we can actually understand what it is that we student teachers are getting ourselves into.