Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #2

Characteristic #2 states that: "We believe that the novice teacher should be an effective communicator." The articifact that I have chosen to use to represent this characteristic in my schastic teacher homepage we created in Kaye McCrory's Classroom Management class. This homepage is created by the teacher and give parents access to what's going on in the classroom. I like the idea of making this website available to my parents because it allows not only the parents but their whole families to see what's going on in my classroom. They would get daily updates on homework assignments, weekly updates on what's going on in the classroom, as well as reccommendations for books for their students to read. I would also like to add a student spotlight page where I highlight things my students have done exceptionally well! A little motivation for everyone.

Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #3

We believe that the novice teacher should recognize that teaching is a professional, moral, and ethical enterprise, should understand moreal issues and ethical practices in educational environments, and should have developed ethical frameworks which facilitate effective teaching. The artificat I chose to use to represent this characteristic is my Character Education Lesson Plan from our Classroom Management class. I have developed a lesson plan on Citizenship for 6th graders, in which they learn that a good citizen does everything they can to help out their community. In order to illustrate that they are aware of what a good citizen is, they well identify problems in their community such as poverty and litter and write a skit about how to help solve that problem. I think that its important that teachers educate children on how to be ethical and moral, otherwise they might not ever be taught!

Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #8

We believe that the novice teacher should be a reflective practitioner! The artifact I chose to represent this characteristic is the write up for my mathematics task and discussion from Math Methods last semester. The base of this assignment was to plan and execute a math discussion with my class. I had a group of third graders at the time and the task I decided to have the students partake in was unlikely and likely events. I put the students into groups of three where they were instructed to color a blank spinner with at least two different colors and predict which color they would spin more often and test their predictions. Afterwards, we had a class discussion about the how results compared, or contrasted, to their predictions. My write-up consisted of my plan for action as well as my reflections on the task and discussion. I talked a lot about how the reactions I had anticipated were different from the students actual reactions. I reflected on what I thought the students learned as well as what I thought they still needed some help with. I also reflected on what I learned about student mathematical thinking from doing this activity. I had to think carefully about what I did to elicit thinking from the students and what approach I would take next. There were a lot of factors I was forced to consider when planning and implementing this task, and the write up helped me reflect upon and assess what I learned from it.

Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #7

The artifact I chose to represent the Characteristics of the Novice Teacher was my workstations project from Educ 461 with Sylvia Berryhill during the fall semester of '09. The characteristic that I believe this artifact fits best under is characteristic #7 which says A novice teacher should effectively integrate content and pedagogy because it illustrates that we know what to teach and how to teach it. For the assignment we were given several 4th grade CSO's that we had to cover over a two week literacy unit. What we taught was up to us as long as we covered the CSO's provided by our instructor. My workstations project was based around the theme of Native Americans. I chose a different reading skill each day and taught it with some sort of picture book involving the habits and cultures of Native Americans. I also created 10 workstations that fit along with this theme so as to reinforce those skills.