Engaging Students
With the holidays just around the corner and students’ attention span dwindling as each day passes, why not try some E-Moments to help capture and engage students in learning? Check out some practical ways to incorporate E-Moments into your technical content.
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Fill Your Room with I.D. Posters
Learn how to orchestrate the internal dialogue to create a positive experience for students and help propel their learning in your classroom. Explore a creative way to influence student learning by creating I.D. posters.
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What's New with LK
– LifeKnowledge Online Available January 2007
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LifeKnowledge
AT WORK Newsletter
Designed for Local Teachers
This is the seventh issue of LifeKnowledge AT WORK, a newsletter created by the National FFA Organization to advance the integration of LifeKnowledge in local agricultural education classrooms across America. Designed with local teachers in mind, LifeKnowledge AT WORK is a free electronic newsletter featuring tips from teachers, education experts, leadership gurus and a host of other resources.
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LifeKnowledge AT WORK Newsletter.
LifeKnowledge Online – New "Prescriptive" Tools for Teachers
Christine White, Education Specialist, gives an overview of the new features of LK Online and explains some of the reasons why it is a valuable tool for ag teachers.Click here to read article
Learning the Value of Personal Accountability in the Classroom
Glenn Stith of Monsanto talks about his appreciation for the personal accountability emphasized through LifeKnowledge. Stith is a former FFA member, chairman elect of the 2007 National FFA Foundation Sponsors’ Board and Monsanto’s regional vice president of the Americas, Seminis Seed Division.
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Introduction to Agricultural Careers
Agriculture teacher and FFA advisor Jon Simonsen from Holdrege, Neb., shares a lesson on agricultural careers that integrates the LifeKnowledge precept of vision.
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Click here to read the lesson plan
Merial Helping LifeKnowledge Become an Innovator in Education
As an advocate for education and educational programs, Merial, a supporting partner for the LifeKnowledge Center for Agricultural Education, sees future generations benefiting from LifeKnowledge. Click here to read article
LifeKnowledge Online – New "Prescriptive" Tools for Teachers
By Christine White, Education Specialist, LifeKnowledge Center for Agricultural Education
At the recent national FFA convention, we provided information on the new LifeKnowledge Online in our interactive classroom. We are excited about LK Online because we can now deliver LifeKnowledge to you via the Web, AND we’ve incorporated two new tools that support a more prescriptive approach to leadership development. These tools, the LifeKnowledge Precept Indicator and Online Coaching Guide, were developed by experienced ag teachers and take the guesswork out of determining areas of potential growth for individual students, entire classes and/or your chapter. This is a great benefit to you and your students as it provides a tangible means of measuring student development (directly tied to leadership and LK) beyond a traditional grading scale. It also gives you instant access to results that validate your program during a time when accountability in schools is increasingly important. Now you’ll have more than winning contests and awards to speak for your program. You’ll have data to support what you are teaching in and out of the classroom – and for every student. For those of you who may be reading about this service for the first time, let me further explain these fantastic new tools.
“We will now be able to automatically provide updates so that you will have the latest version of LK every time you log in. Also, with online access, you and your students can quickly and conveniently find what you need to make your experience with LK that much better.”
The LK Precept Indicator is a user-friendly, web-based assessment that evaluates students based on the 16 precepts of leadership. There are three assessments to choose from: premier leadership, personal growth and career success. A pre-test can be used to determine a baseline, and post-tests will enable you to assess growth areas over time. Each indicator has three types of questions: basic knowledge, scenario-based and data interpretation. Once the indicators are completed, you and the student receive reports defining the level achieved for each of the precepts. These levels include pre-awareness, awareness, interaction and mastery. Students also receive two prescribed activities to help increase their skills development for each precept based on their current levels. You can run reports by individual students, groups of students, classes or by chapter and determine areas of growth and improvement.
The Online Coaching Guide works hand in hand with the indicator by providing methods that will help you plan and effectively implement coaching sessions. This includes a few basic guidelines regarding language, techniques and the use of personal growth plans. Within the guide, you will find ready-to-use templates and more than 275 lessons/activities to support the things already going on in a busy agriculture program. These include turnkey lessons and activities based on classroom, SAE and FFA activities or a combination thereof. These activities are broken into precepts and correlate to the precept levels of application as established by the LK Precept Indicator. Coaching guide activities are also designed around the school year so as to not create more work for you! When using the guide, you can search by program activity – classroom, SAE or FFA – or by more than 30 types of activities within these categories, such as CDE preparation, community service and field trips. Activities also give you the flexibility to lead the activity yourself or for your students to take a self-directed approach and lead themselves.
In addition to the new tools just described, we will continue to offer you the original features of LK, including lessons, integration tools and E-Moments. And the best part is, it’s all online! We will now be able to automatically provide updates so you will have the latest version of LK every time you log in. Also, with online access, you and your students can quickly and conveniently find what you need to make your experience with LK that much better. And if you haven’t already started using LK, it’s a great way to jump in and give it a try. By knowing where your students are in the area of leadership development before you use LK, it will be easier to determine which LK lessons and activities are right for your students – again, taking out the guesswork and, hopefully, making your job easier.
LK Online will be available after Jan. 2, 2007, at a special introductory price of $59 per school for a 365-day subscription. We hope you will consider it. You can subscribe by calling the National FFA Call Center at 1-888-332-2668 and asking for LifeKnowledge Online. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at cwhite@ffa.org. Our goal is to make LK easier and more useful to you and your students. We feel our new online format in combination with the LK Precept Indicator and LK Coaching Guide are just what the doctor ordered! I look forward to your positive response.
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Learning the Value of Personal Accountability in the Classroom
By Glenn Stith, Regional Vice President of the Americas, Seminis Seed Division, Monsanto
In my almost 30 years at Monsanto, I have learned that accountability and taking responsibility for your actions is fundamental to successful leadership in the commercial world. Running a business is about managing people, money and resources. In that regard, the implications from decisions have to be owned by the people making them. When I tackle a problem or challenge, I evaluate the risks and make decisions or adjustments as if I owned the business myself. This requires that I also accept full responsibility for the consequences, which is not always pleasant. But, it is the reality of the world we are preparing our students to live and work in. It is also the reality if we want to develop students with strong character who stand firm in their convictions and refuse to pass the buck when things don’t go as planned. This is what I appreciate most about the LifeKnowledge curriculum.
“LifeKnowledge enables students to become empowered in their learning and therefore raises the bar for academic achievement. Likewise, teachers become empowered in their teaching, pushing education to a higher level. When you have an educational model like this, personal accountability becomes second nature!”
As all of you know well, LifeKnowledge combines academics with the application of fundamental life skills to help young people succeed. Attributes like teamwork, responsibility, character, financial stewardship, leadership and decision making are all emphasized through LifeKnowledge. These are the building blocks for developing quality people and employees. I love the idea that when students study a typical agriculture lesson such as feed nutrition or plant science, they learn there is more than one answer and that they are responsible for that answer. They start asking themselves, How did I arrive at my decision? What are the risks involved? What are the implications? They also learn how something like plant science can relate to other academic applications and/or life in general, further expanding their capacity for critical thinking. LifeKnowledge enables students to become empowered in their learning and therefore raises the bar for academic achievement. Likewise, teachers become empowered in their teaching, pushing education to a higher level. When you have an educational model like this, personal accountability becomes second nature!
The training provided by LifeKnowledge closely mimics what we teach our employees through our training programs at Monsanto. This includes training on financial stewardship, decision making/analysis, leadership and other topics related to personal accountability. Ag ed students who have exposure to LifeKnowledge early on are getting a head start! The earlier they get the training, the better – and the less training they’ll need once they enter the workforce. This is great news for Monsanto as a company of 17,000 employees and is one of the reasons we are a LifeKnowledge founding partner. Not only are we developing a tremendous source of leadership and larger pool of employees for Monsanto long-term, but we are contributing to the industry’s workforce and the future of agriculture as a whole. In a global and competitive marketplace, LifeKnowledge is cultivating the leadership skills that many young people lack regardless of their academic background.
All of us at Monsanto are excited about the influence that LifeKnowledge is having in the classroom and the potential it has for the future. It is our hope that LifeKnowledge will generate a broader base of use within the agricultural education community and that someday these methodologies will reach other academic subjects. Personally, I know that if I had LifeKnowledge as a high school agriculture student, I would have remembered more and would have had a better understanding of the concept of risk versus reward. The ability to apply academic learning to decision making prepares young people in a way that will help them avoid the “school of hard knocks” once they enter the working world. In the realm of decision making and personal accountability, LifeKnowledge is a no-brainer! Many thanks to all of you who are using LifeKnowledge and leading the way to educational excellence.
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Featured Lesson Plan – Introduction to Agricultural Careers
Jon Simonsen, Agriculture Teacher, Holdrege, Nebraska
Jon Simonsen is an agriculture educator from Holdrege, Neb., whose philosophy of teaching is “to provide the opportunity for every student to learn when they walk into [his] classroom and for them to be challenged to achieve.” Simonsen has developed a lesson to challenge his students to master the LifeKnowledge precept of vision while learning about agricultural careers. Simonsen believes that “by relating education to real-world experience, it puts color into the lessons and helps to engage the students.” While developing the lesson, Simonsen uses E-Moments such as the $10,000 Pyramid to engage students to learn the basic foundational information regarding the numerous agricultural career opportunities available. Click on the link provided to explore this exciting lesson on agricultural careers.
To view a complete version of Jon's lesson click here.
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Merial Helping LifeKnowledge Become an Innovator in Education
As an innovation leader in the animal health industry, Merial has always been a strong supporter of education, especially in the areas of animal science and veterinary medicine. So, when the company learned about the LifeKnowledge Center for Agricultural Education, Merial didn’t have to think twice about becoming a supporting partner.
“Merial has been actively involved with supporting the FFA and its programs since our company was founded in 1997,” says Mike Eade, Executive Director, Large Animal & Equine. “LifeKnowledge is yet another innovation from the National FFA Organization that is helping students better prepare for their futures so they can help the agricultural industry as a whole.”
Merial was founded in August 1997 through the merger of the animal health businesses of Merck and Co. Inc. and Rhone Merieux, a predecessor to Sanofi-Aventis. Today, Merial employs more than 5,000 people worldwide in more than 150 countries. The company’s leading products include a wide range of veterinary specialties, including an extensive portfolio of paraciticides, vaccines and therapeutics for both production and companion animals.
Merial is best known worldwide for its antiparasitics. IVOMEC®, launched in 1981, is for treatment and protection against parasites in large animals such as cattle, sheep and swine and is the world’s single most successful animal health product. FRONTLINE®, launched in 1984, has established a parallel position for dogs and cats and is now the best-selling flea and tick treatment in the world. Merial’s HEARTGARD® is the best-selling heartworm preventive worldwide, remaining an essential product in a veterinarian’s arsenal.
Not only does Merial invest in research and development, but the company strongly feels education is a key part to all of their achievements. Education is a building block for company success.
“The LifeKnowledge program is changing the way students are being prepared for their futures, whether it is in animal health or any other agricultural industry,” says Eade. “LifeKnowledge is ensuring that the future generation of agriculture will take the industry to new heights.”
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LifeKnowledge in Action – Engaging Students
By Christine White, Education Specialist, LifeKnowledge Center for Agricultural Education
With the holidays and winter break just around the corner, the students’ level of focus is deteriorating by the moment. The instructional days leading up to winter break are interrupted because of fundraisers, field trips, holiday concerts and other activities that take place during this time of year. Even with all that is going on, we need to continue to provide meaningful learning experiences for our students. One way to help keep students focused is to create an engaging classroom that does not allow them the opportunity to have their minds wander. When students start to wander mentally, they fill their thoughts with other things that take them away from being on tasks and engaged in learning. Why not take this time to start or continue to use E-Moments to create a learning environment that is fun and engaging? Listed below are a couple of E-Moments that I have used to help create an inviting learning environment that kept my students focused on course material.
$10,000 Pyramid Moment
As a classroom teacher, I used this E-Moment with my students to review for plant identification quizzes. I would print color pictures of the plants on the quiz. Students would give clues based on the characteristics of the plant and try to get their partners to guess which plant was being described. I would then switch the cards with the pictures to just the names of each plant and students would have to do the same by giving clues to get their peers to identify the correct plant.
Michelangelo Moment
In my agricultural mechanics class, we would spend a great deal of time learning the parts of a small engine that made up individual systems. Students always struggled with identifying the parts of the engine, which made it very difficult for them to work on the engine systems in the shop. To help students with part identification, each student received a container of play dough. When we were learning about a new system and the parts that made up that system, the students would create each part by modeling the play dough. I noticed that when the students were creating the parts, it helped them retain the correct terms used for the parts. Then, when I would ask them questions about engines in the shop, my students were better able to articulate their answers.
These are just two E-Moments that I have used to create an engaging learning environment for my students during class. To learn about other E-Moments, check out the E-Moment section on the LifeKnowledge CD, reference Strategies for Great Teaching by Reardon and Derner or use Engaging Strategies for Ag Classrooms, available for purchase in the Core catalog.
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Fill Your Room with I.D. Posters
From Hot Tips for Teachers, by Abernathy and Reardon
Do you have a voice inside your head? Yes, I mean the one that just said, “Are you talking to me?” We all have a little voice that talks to us when we are in the challenging situations. Depending on our past experiences, our internal voice might be encouraging (“I can do it!” “I can make it!” “That’s it, keep going!”) or discouraging (You want me to do what?” “I’ve never been any good at that.”) We refer to this voice as our I.D. – or internal dialogue. The voices inside our heads – and the ones inside our students’ heads – are the most powerful determinant of learning success. Think about it. This claim makes sense, doesn’t it? What we say to ourselves powerfully influences our ability.
Are there ways to cultivate positive internal dialogue in your students, a voice that would propel them forward rather then hold them back? Of course there are! One strategy is to have students say positive sentences aloud. For example, “I can learn this!” “This is getting easier for me!” “I am smart and gifted!” Also have students say positive statements to one another. Here are a few examples: “You can do it!” “Hey, I’ll bet you’ve always been really smart.” “Way to go! Great problem solving!”
I.D. posters are one more way to influence and shape the voice inside students’ heads. Create 11x17-inch posters with affirming statements you want students to say to themselves – statements about their abilities, the content they are learning and the goals for the classroom. Examples include:
Am I Learning or what!
I’m getting Smarter with every new challenge!
Math Matters…and I can prove it!
Place the posters so they are at eye level when students are seated. As students glance around the room, they read messages that strengthen the positive attitudes and thoughts they need for success.
Make It Mine
What would you like your students to say about learning, about your content or about themselves? Create two I.D. posters. Better yet, have the students collaborate to create posters with the content you specify. Remember to make the most important words in the statement colorful and bold. Rotate the posters every few weeks or put up a new set to keep interest.
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What's New with LK
LifeKnowledge Online Available January 2007
Subscribe to LK Online starting Jan. 1, 2007, for $59 per chapter. This chapter subscription will grant you access to the LK Precept Indicator, Coaching Guide, LK Lesson Plans and Integration Tool – all on a web-based platform for easy accessibility. To purchase LifeKnowledge Online, see the Core catalog for more information. LifeKnowledge Online contact: Christine White, cwhite@ffa.org or 317-802-4212.
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