Artifacts and charateristics of a Novie Teacher Charateristic #6

The artifact that best describes characteristic #6 is my ending inquiry project of my Reading 422 class. Characteristic #6: We believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of content. The project gave me a insight of the different ideas and subjects inside of a novel.
The inquiry project was based on a novel that was chosen from a given list. I was to read the novel and ask questions along the way. At the end of the novel, I took my questions and picked out 2 main questions that I wanted to understand more of. Of those two questions, I needed to pick out 3 sub-questions that followed the main question. I researched my questions to gain knowledge of the content that was shared in the book.
For this inquiry project, I read the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. The book was about a young girl named Lily Owens who lives with a blurred memory of the day her mother died. She lives with her father, T. Ray, and maid/stand in mother, Rosaleen. She wants to find out more about her mother by T. Ray will never talk about her and he does not show Lily love or respect. Lily ends up running away with Rosaleen when she disrespects three white men. They end up being taken in by three sisters, August, June and May. They live there for a while and help the three sisters work around the house. Lily helps August out with the honey making process and taking care of the bee hives. If you want to know more you should read the book. There is also a movie starring Dakota Fanning as Lily.
Reading the book I questions on the process of beekeeping and the honey bee cycle. I was unsure on how beekeeping went about and the cycle of the honey bees. I researched multiple websites and watched several videos to help me get a concrete knowledge on these two main questions. I put a power point together to describe the book and the questions I had.
I was able to share my results with my class to show them the questions I had and the answers to them. I wanted them to see how I researched my questions and why I wanted to know the answers to these questions.
This type of project can be used with my students as well. I can have them read a novel and as they are reading write questions down and post-it note them inside of the book on the page where they had the question. At the end I will have them pick out their two favorite questions and research them to find answers. This would be great to do with a whole class because they will hopefully all have different questions.

Artifacts and Characteristic of a Novice Teacher Characteristic #2

The second characteristic for being a novice teacher involves effective communication. In Education 401 I was assigned for creating a homepage for my classroom. I was to make up assignments, book list, and software list for my class. This was a way that teacher could show the parents what was going on inside of the classroom. This would be an effective way for the parents and the teacher to stay in contact with each other and to communicate about the child.

For the front page on my home page, I was to introduce myself to the viewers. I presented a photo and some background information on myself. I also included a paragraph what I would be doing with the students. Since I do not have an actual class, I used my classroom that I am place in for this semester (spring 2010). Through the rest of the pages I made sure that everything was based on what they were doing in the classroom or on a 5th grade level. The book list was concentrated on the social studies lessons they were covering when I created the home page. I made sure that I had a picture and an explanation of the book and why I would like them to read the book. For the assignment page, I described some of the lessons that were going on inside of the classroom as well. They had a math test on geometry coming up that they took notes on. For the description, I let the parents know about the study book and the study guide that my mentor teacher sent home with the students. The software page was based on a 5th grade level around the lessons they were concentrating on inside of the classroom.

I really wanted the parents to be able to see what was going on inside of the classroom on the home page. My PDS uses Edline as a means for parents to look their child's grades up. With the home page, the parents would also be able to see descriptions of the lessons inside the classroom and the assigments that were assigned. They will be able to see the upcoming test their child will have to take as well. This will help with the parents questions about what their child is doing inside the classroom. Instead of asking the child or the teacher they will be able to go to the homepage and read about the day and the assignments that follow. This will help the teacher because the parents will not have to ask why as much as reading why on the home page.

On the front page of the home page, I made sure to include certain personal information. I wanted the parents to be able to reach me if they still had questions about the lessons. This is where I included my e-mail address. I encouraged the parents that they should e-mail me at anytime for questions and I would get back to them as soon as possible.

The home page is a good artifact of communication since the parents are able to look at what their child is doing. Since the teacher is able to put descriptions of everything posted on the page, this helps the parents see what their child is learning. Having the parents fully involved and knowing will help the child in the long run. The parents will be able to aid the child in any homework or questions they may have. If the parents are unsure of an answer or anything, that is where the e-mail comes into effect. The parents will be able to reach the teacher with any questions they may have.

Artifacts and Characteristics of a Novice Teacher Charateristic #4

In the Benedum Collaborative, characteristic #4 a teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students. A way that I represented this characteristic is through my assignment of the workstation assignment. I had to create a 2 week unit on a topic along with workstations for the 2 weeks. My topic was Anne Frank. I read several books that I would be able to make available for the students to read during this unit plan. I had 12 different workstations that were set up around the topic of Anne Frank and the World War II. For this assignment we were given a demo class with different abilities. I had two students per workstations. Therefore, I had to split the class up to make sure they were able to relate to the other partner. For the workstations, I did include some differentiated instruction for the different leveled learners. I wanted to make sure that the students in the workstations did not need a big amount of help since I would be working with my own group doing something else. For the 12 different workstations there were multiple assignments that I had to collect the resources for. For example, one of the workstations dealt with setting bag up at the workstation. Inside each bag was an artifact that represented something of the war or Anne, a book that would give more information on the artifact and a questionnaire to help them understand what the artifact was. In order for the students to complete this workstation, I would have to make sure I had the resources to put in the bag. This also gave the students the decision of which artifact they would research.

Overall, this workstation assignment helped be see the process a teacher goes through to get all the resources and information they need in order for the students to learn about the topic. The workstations were a difficult process for me to come up with since I have not seen them acted in my school so far. This assignment was difficult yet it helped me in the long run see the difficulty and the time spent to create a workstation unit plan.

Artifacts and Charateristics of a Novie Teacher # 1

The artifact that I brought to seminar was my inquiry project from Educ 422. This piece of work I had to read a chapter book and ask questions to further investigate the book. I then had to research my questions for a presentation. This piece of work is considered under characteristic 1 to have a commitment to and skills for life-long learning. This is because the questions were a way to find out more from the book. The questions also help read more into the book as well as feel like you are in the book. Another person from my group suggested that this piece of work could also fall under characteristic 2 because I incorporated a presentation with the research.