Artifacts and Characteristics of the novice teacher #5

My newest artifact is something that I have recently incorporated in a recent lesson. I have chosen to have my students create a graphic organizer for a certain section in my Geometry class. The lessons that we were going over involved angles of elevation and depression, which primarily consists of word problems. I know from prior knowledge with students and myself that in mathematics nearly everyone hates to do word problems. The graphic organizer I had the students create was used to help them understand the steps to go through while solving a word problem. The organizer was made with one piece of paper that was folded so there would be three rectangles long ways and the students then cut the two end rectangles in half to create four flaps. The first flap was labeled understand. Through conversation with the class we decided what we think should go under this flap. The second flap was labeled plan to see how a student should go about a problem. The third was labeled solve and the final flap was labeled check. For each flap we talked as a class to decide what we should do for each step. This allows for the students to have a guide on how to solve all sorts of word problems. Characteristic #5 states that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of pedagogy and I feel that this artifact connects very well with this characteristic. It really allowed for the students to be creative and be able to understand how others think and approach word problems. Through all the collaboration between my students and I, we developed a great graphic organizer that I believe will help them in my class and others.

Artifacts and Characteristics of the novice teacher #2

The artifact I chose today was my triangle concept cards that I have recently used in my geometry class to help my students derive the Pythagorean Theorem. The students started out with two congruent right triangles and cut one into two smaller triangles. The three triangles were all labeled and through communication with my students we could all find out that the three triangles are all similar and we could find geometric means to solve for the Pythagorean Theorem. Once we had completed the triangles we would label one side of the biggest triangle Pythagorean Theorem and the other side with its definition. This allows for students to use it as a concept card. You might wonder why I think this can fall under Characteristic #2, but I believe it does because I had to communicate with my students the whole time. This lesson required me to have them follow along with me when cutting the triangle in the right place. I also had to communicate well enough so they could see how the three triangles were congruent and remind them of what the definition of a geometric mean is. For this artifact to work effectively in my class I had to speak throughout the entire lesson and guide the students to correctly place the triangles. I also would leave open ended questions because I believe that is a good way to communicate and have my students come up with the answers on their own. I feel this can fall under other characteristics as well but feel that communication was a big part in getting this artifact to work in my classroom.

Artifacts and Characteristics of the novice teacher #7

In class today I brought in my assessment artifact that I came to the conclussion that it falls under #7 on the Characteristics of a Novice Teacher. The #7 characteristic states that we believe that the novice teacher should effectively integrate content and pedagogy. My assessment project did this just this because of the way I went about presenting my students with a quiz. I believe that students should have a review at the start of every class to refresh their memories of what they had been taught in previous days. Before I gave my students the assessment I did a quick overview and a few example problems to help the students better understand the material. The assessment itself was assessing my students in mathematics, which tends to be difficult for students at the middle school level. I think characteristic #7 is very important to a future educator because teachers need to be able to link their content area to their style of teaching. If a teacher cannot do this then it will be diffiicult for a teacher to get students involved in the lesson he or she is teaching. I believe that every characteristic is important to a future educator and that being able to integrate content and pedagogy is very important for someone who wants to be a great teacher.