RTL Reflection on the Bowline Knot
On our first day of the AEE (Agricultural and Extension Education) 412 lab, our cohort presented a real teachable moment that was chosen at random on Monday. The packets ranged from arrowheads, tikis, origami, castles, and other random subjects. For mine, I was lucky enough to get the Bowline Knot packet to teach for 10 minutes. At first, I thought it had something to do with bow hunting because I read it as bow-line. It was not until I started to read the packet that I realized it was bow-lin (e is silent), the same knot that I learned at Miracle Mountain Ranch as a barn major to tie horses to posts. However, that was 6 years ago since I had used this knot on a regular basis. So, I had to practice a lot to figure out how to do it again.
As for my lesson for lab on this subject, I wanted to take it back to my bootcamp days at the Ranch, where all students learn this knot to use during their barn rotation. I decided to use the three-step model: teacher says-teacher does, then the student says- teacher does, and lastly student says- student does. This is where I showed how to tie the bowline knot by pretending to tie an imaginary horse to a post (or the classroom door knob). I went step by step through the process of making the knot, allowing the students to visualize each step. Then, I asked if there were any questions before seeing if the students (cohort members) were confident enough to walk me through the steps. After the confident student walked me through the knotting process, I asked the students to put what they learned into action by tying the knot with a piece of string themselves. I, as the teacher, walked around to make sure that all the students were doing the Bowline Knot correctly and helped answer any questions along the way (some might not feel comfortable asking for help in front of a group). Once they understood how to tie the knot, I challenged them to a friendly competition to see who could tie the knot the fastest. I ended up timing the students and giving encouragement along the way. I timed the students several times, even having the students start at the corner of the classroom like they were leading an imaginary horse to a pretend post before trying to see who completed the knot the fastest. Then, when I felt that the students were confident enough on the Bowline Knot and the activity and time were exhausted, I ended the teachable moment by testing the students on their ability to tie the knot without errors. It was a zero to one scale with zero as tying the knot with errors and one as tying the knot without errors.
How I Thought It Went?
As for how it actually went in the lab, it did not exactly go to plan. As always, it sounds way better in my head and in practice than when I actually present the lesson. Sometimes I feel like nerves still get to me in this way, which I am still working on getting better at. This includes working on adding more clarity to my instructions. That's why they say practice makes perfect! In addition, I was trying to keep my lesson as short as possible so that I did not go over time or end up lecturing too much, but I believe I ended up ending shorter than 10 minutes (I need to learn to keep time more often when I teach). Plus, the activities did not take as long as I had anticipated because teaching my cohort is way different from teaching high schoolers or middle schoolers. I need to keep that in mind going further into labs. Yes, I can use these lessons in the future for student teaching, but I still need to adjust the lessons for labs to fit the audience. Furthermore, even though it was an 8 a.m. lab session and I was the first presenter, it seemed that the audience was not that excited about the lesson. So, I need to work on coming up with new ways to utilize the three-step model to better engage them.
How Does It Relate to What I Know about Teaching and Learning?
Looking over the lesson for the day, we talked about the characteristics of effective teaching. My group considered characteristics such as engaging, clarity, timely, student-led, passionate, variability, and organization to name a few. All characteristics that I thought about while creating my lesson plan, but still need to expand upon moving forward this year before student teaching.
From prior knowledge, learning for students happens in multiple different ways. Some students learn better visually, others orally, and most interactively. So, we need to utilize all learning aspects in our lessons. I admit that this was hard to do with learning to tie a Bowline Knot because utilizing good visuals for this assignment was hard to find. Each video showed a different way to tie the knot that seemed more difficult for the audience to grasp. So, with teaching certain topics, I need to be more aware of the learning methods that my students need and how to utilize these aspects in interactive activities that are student-focused or led. In addition, the activities and topics need to be short and simple with clear instructions to make sure everyone follows along and stays focused on the material the will be put into application in the future. Another thing that we learned about today was contextual learning/teaching, which flows right with these previous ideas. As teachers, we need to align our lessons as close to application as possible to help all of our students thoroughly understand the topics and subjects that we cover in our class. So, having access to lead ropes and posts for my activity would have been better. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I utilized the three-step model that I learned in AEE 100 and during bootcamp. Hence, with these ideas in mind, I was able to create a lesson for ten minutes on the Bowline knot and reflect on these aspects in order to evaluate the effectiveness of my lesson and improve upon it for my future labs and lessons.
What Did I Learn?
Thus, as you can already see, I have learned a lot from today's lab session and how my lesson/RTL went. Some pointers that were given to me were clarity, creating a PowerPoint with pictures that help highlight the steps more, and finding ways to expand the three-step model to be more effective. All suggestions that I will consider going into my next lab teaching moment. On the other hand, I also quickly reflected on my lesson afterward and came up with some ideas to make the lesson better. First, to make the lesson more exciting, I could have put on an illustration or story to transport the audience back to the Ranch bootcamp as they learn to tie the Bowline Knot. Next, the utilization of actually having hitching posts and lead ropes for the activity would have done better than just using things within the classroom to pretend and create the knot. Even a barn setting would have been more exciting for the audience/students to get them out of the classroom. As for the competition, I could have asked for some people to pretend to be the horses that their partner ties to the post with a Bowline Knot, but this would have only worked with longer string/lead ropes and an even amount of people. This way the competition could be a group event to see which group finishes first. Like I said before, I need more clarity in instructions. More eye contact with the audience/students as well as a cool interest approach would be helpful, too.
How Can I Apply This As An Agriscience Teacher?
Thus, all of these reflective moments I can take with me as an agriscience teacher in the way that I think of how to create lesson and unit plans and how I present them to a class of students for effective and contextual teaching. As for the random topic in general, I believe that I did a great job incorporating an agricultural aspect to the Bowline Knot that I would love to use within an Animal Science and Veterinary Science class in the future when I talk about livestock management, care, and handling. So, I can take this feedback and improve the lesson for such a moment in the future!
Thanks for reading!
Just Keeping It Veal,
Emily Jay
