So anyway, as part of my student teaching preparation, I was required to teach a Life Knowledge lesson to my students at Kennard Dale.
What is a Life Knowledge lesson?
Well the National FFA did a great job of creating complete lesson plans on common every day personal growth and development skills. The purpose of me teaching a basic personal growth skill was to just give me more confidence in my teaching as well as becoming more acquainted with my students.
Since we are among the holiday season, I chose to teach a lesson on serving others. This lesson stood out to me for many reasons. I strive to serve others in any way I possible can, and as an educator I want my students to see that in me. I want them to know that not only will I serve them through their education but I also expect them to help me serve others through our agricultural program. Also with the holidays right around the corner there are always needs to be filled and I felt this was a great time for us to fill them.
I had a complete lesson plan already created for me from the FFA Life Knowledge program, all I needed to do was teach it. But I wanted this lesson to come to life for my kids. I wanted them to actually serve and find meaning and value in that five letter word.
After communicating my ideas with Miss. Smith we decided to conduct a canned food drive for our own food pantry within our school district. I felt this was a great way students could serve other students within our district.
I am thankful for Miss. Smith and her unconditional help and support as she informed our agriculture classes of our food drive mission and encouraged our students to bring in canned food for one week. We made our serving process a competition among all of our agriculture classes and whichever class period brought in the most items would receive a prize when I came to teach my lesson on the 24th.
When I got to Kennard Dale yesterday, I was pleased to see we had collected 2 boxes of canned food items to give to our food pantry. I was proud to see that our students actually participated and felt the need to serve others. Our period 9 Horticulture 2 class brought in the most items so they received cookies for their generous support.
Now for the actual lesson part...I taught a lesson on serving others to our Intro to Agriculture and Natural Resource class. This class consists of 14 students most of which are 9th graders. After teaching this class I am reminded as to why I do not teach any grades lower than high school. Overall the teaching went well.
Throughout the lesson we created a serving plate, which illustrated 4 areas in which we have the opportunity to reach out and serve others. We also illustrated 4 ways we can contribute to a service which include: time, money, gifts & abilities, and affections/encouragement. I had the student work in groups of 3 to create a service project or event in which they had to identify who, what, when, how, where, and why they were serving. And the last activity I had our students do was to write a word of encouragement to each other. On a piece of white copy paper each student wrote their name in the middle of the page. We passed each paper around to each student and each student then had to write something encouraging to the student whose paper they had. I wanted this to be away for our students to see how easily they can serve others with their words.
I felt good after teaching the lesson. I think this class will be an opportunity for me to grow in my abilities to maintain an instructional and enjoyable environment as well as help me implement my classroom management skills, and that is something I will look forward to with an open mind.
Overall, as always is was a great day at Kennard Dale and I continue to anxiously wait until I can be there everyday!!
Miss. Timmons
"A life of significance is about serving those who need your gifts, your leadership, your purpose." - Kevin Hall
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