What's the Problem?

Recently the PSU Ag Ed crew has been working hard learning how to incorporate problem solving into our lessons. Last week I had the chance to incorporate the problem solving approach into a lesson in my floriculture unit.

The students were given a task to create a floral design for a customer. Their design had to contain three principles of design: balance, focal point, and proportion. The fun part is that their design was made of candy! They got to decide what flower each type of candy represented. They were all given the same materials and had to solve how they were going to show the principles. This would be considered the possibilities factors problem solving approach because each student had the same materials but there were many different possibilities of how they could show the principles in their design. It was so fun seeing everyone get to be creative with their designs!

I know that when teaching students it can be really effective to allow them to practice what they have learned hands on. Although this lesson was really fun and I thought it went pretty well, I learned that sometimes it is important to be more specific on what you want your students to do for a project like this. In the future when I am an agriscience teacher I will use the problem solving approach often. I think that when using the problem solving approach it can be a fun formative assessment to see what your students have learned. I truly believe that when students are enjoying what they are learning they will remember it better.

Thats all for this weeks story with Ms. Sweeten. Thanks for reading!