‘Defining the Ovine’ Discussion

Defining sheep breeds at first glance probably wouldn’t rank at the top of the majority of people’s ‘most exciting lesson topics’ but I still believe students can learn a lot from sheep breeds.  I plan to take some cheese made from sheep milk and yarn made of wool to show the students how sheep can be related to real life.  Now days, many students do not know where the everyday products they eat, wear and use come from.  I chose these teaching methods because I felt they would be the most effective and were the most applicable for defining sheep.  Unless you have slides or transparencies, a power point is your best bet for identifying breeds.  As for my E-moments, I chose the ‘Crayon Moment’ to color code meat, wool and dual purpose breeds.  The set of student’s notes I created has blanks they will fill in with colored markers.  For my color representations, red correlates to meat, yellow to wool and orange (a mix of the two) symbolizes the dual purpose breeds.  I felt that students could make a connection with the colors mixing together to create the dual purpose.  For learning the breeds, I created a Jeopardy game.  Relating sheep to real life and being able to correctly identify them by characteristics was a very important skill to me for the students to learn.  Many students have different learning styles so incorporating colors, visual, and auditory aspects into the lesson, you stand a greater chance of learning and memorization to occur.  With the game, the students can also demonstrate that they have learned the material.  I also created a worksheet for the students to show their knowledge of sheep breed types.  My only concerns for teaching this lesson to high school students is I’m not sure this lesson is class appropriate.  To further explain, I almost feel as if this lesson is better taught to a 101/102 class.  I feel this assignment will benefit me later as a professional AGSC teacher in that I have realized how long it takes to develop a lesson plan.  Also, I now have an even greater respect for all the AGSC teachers who create a program from the ground up.