Learning Goals

One of my learning goals that I created to accomplish this year was to speak loudly while teaching lessons. When I taught lessons last semester, I often was encouraged by my host teacher to speak louder when presenting the information. This semester, I have been more aware of the volume of my voice when teaching my lessons to ensure that I reach all students. I knew that speaking louder would make a difference in keeping the students’ attention, but I never realized how much it would affect my lessons. Since I have worked toward this goal, I find the students’ goofing off/talking less and staying actively engaged in the lesson.


As the semester progresses, I find the target dates of my assignments and goals being revised a bit. This is due to snow days, two hour delays, and time management occurring in the classroom. Along with my mentor teachers help though, I have found it very easy to get all of my goals and assignments completed this fur due to her continuing support. I have yet to get behind in my assignments and hope to keep it that way.


As far as learning goals go, I find myself creating a learning goal every week to accomplish for the duration of those days. I find that this helps me to stay motivated and focused as to what I have to complete and allows me to put forth all my efforts onto those subjects/assignments.

Characteristics of a Novice Teacher

Characteristic # 7: we believe that the novice teacher should effectively integrate content and pedagogy.

Characteristic # 7 highlights the fact that the novice teacher should be able to successfully link content knowledge with his/her pedagogical knowledge. The combination of the two allows teachers to know what and how to teach the particular subject content. This is important because a teacher should be able to take specific subject topics and translate them into a lesson which represents the way they teach and the way their students are able to learn. Anyone, given the information, could teach a lesson to a class about particular subject content, but the effectiveness of a lesson depends on a teacher’s pedagogy and understanding of his/her students.

An artifact that I would use to correspond with characteristic # 7 would be my unit plan in which I created for my Elementary School Health Program class. Through this course, I was instructed to create a unit plan consisting of 12 lesson plans based on a given curriculum unit. The 12 lessons included in this unit plan were reflections of the information that I felt was most important to relay to my students. The lessons were also planned to reflect the teaching style in which I use currently and plan to use in my future career.

I feel that my unit plan fits into the category with characteristic 7 being that the novice teacher should effectively integrate content and pedagogy for many reasons. One of these reasons is that the lesson plans that make up my unit plan effectively show the pedagogy in which I base my teaching on. As an educator, I feel the uses of all types of instruction are necessary to reach each of my students and that strategy is shown within my lesson plans. Also as an educator, especially an elementary educator in which you teach all different subjects in a given day, it is important to be able to present the content to students in a way that they will understand and learn to the best of their ability. This concept is shown in my unit plan because they not only show my teaching styles and pedagogy but also show my knowledge in the content that is to be taught.

Characteristic # 2: We believe that the novice teacher should be an effective communicator

Characteristic # 2, we believe that the novice teacher should be an effective communicator is very important in the aspect of the Benedum program as well as for teaching in general. In order for a teacher to be effective, he/she must be an effective communicator both verbally through their lessons, non-verbally, and written. It is very important for a teacher to communicate in these various ways because it gives students the chance to retrieve information in various forms. For example, it is important for teachers to force students to get their information through a given text or through directions rather than directly telling them the information all of the time. Through this, students get a sense of responsibility and are able to retrieve information themselves.

An artifact that I feel corresponds with characteristic # 2 is written feedback based on a lesson observation done by the tutor coordinator in my PDS school. Throughout my student teaching years, I have had many observations done while I was teaching lessons, but this particular observation stuck out to me the most and in my opinion best reflects this characteristic. During this particular observation, I happened to be teaching alongside a substitute for the day, working with the students on a tech-steps assignment. The observations are a great way to show an observer’s opinion of the way in which I present myself to my students and teach my lessons. These observations are a great way to figure out which aspects of teaching you need to improve and what your strengths are.

I feel that the observation feedback notes correspond well with characteristic 2 because the notes show the ways in which the teacher communicates with his/her students. Without the aspect of communication, a classroom where learning takes place would not be possible. I feel that the observation feedback is a great representative of this characteristic because they show real-life situations in which the teacher is teaching her students and is a true reflection of how he/she communicates daily.