On Friday I went to visit another science class in the school to observe the difference between an Ag science class and a "normal" science class.
The class I went to observe was an earth science based class and they were going over the water cycle. They were given a worksheet that they had to fill out definitions on and since Juniata Valley is a 1:1 school the students used their Chromebooks to find the definitions on USGS. It was different in the aspect that what they were doing was very worksheet based compared to being in the Ag room.
When it came to student interest, only a couple students seemed to really care what was going on. Overall they seemed a little bored with what was happening. What surprised me was there were students in that class that I had already met because they were Ag kids. However, the way they acted in the science class was different than how they acted in the Ag room. There was one student in particular that caught me off guard because my impression on him was he was a nice kid, but in the science room he had a lot of back talk for the science teacher.
There was a lot of joking back and forth between the students and the teacher, however there would be a point where the joking would go a little to far which resulted in the teacher semi yelling at the students. With that being said, even though the students would go slightly astray, they still would still work on the worksheet they were supposed to. The day before I observed the students had watched a movie and only had 10 minutes of it left, so most of the class involved the students begging to watch the last of it.
The way the teacher handled it was since they weren't extremely bad after they filled out their worksheet and did a short 15 minute lecture on the water cycle, he allotted the last 10 minutes of class for the students to finish the movie they had started the day before.
My conclusion: Science is cool no matter what the subject area, but not every student is going to think that way. In a general science class you get all students, which means there are going to be students that are uninterested. However, since Ag is an elective the students in the class are going to tend to show more interest into what is happening.
Rachel, taking advantage of opportunities to watch other teachers teach is an excellent way for you to gain new perspectives on the profession and for you to add new tools to your teacher toolbox, especially for classroom management. Ag is a very science based subject and shares a lot of the same material that is covered in most general science classes, but how the material is presented and what students are allowed to do with it to make it interactive and their own very much determines the experience they have in these similar classes. It's always interesting to watch students in different educational settings, and I challenge you to compare and contrast what is done in ag class vs. science class that causes students to be more engaged and well-behaved in one over the other.
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