Artifacts and Characteristics of a Novice Teacher #6

I would like to talk about the science unit plan. For this lesson i chose to create a lesson around weathering and erosion. For this lesson i began by just introducing the topic to the students because they didn't know much about the topic at all when I did the interview. After introducing the topic I moved on to letting the students work with their hands to gain knowledge about erosion and weathering. They got to draw pictures and work with sand to see the process of erosion. The students seemed to really enjoy working with their hands. By the end of the science unit i had the students draw a picture of erosion or weathering and write a few sentences on what was happening in their picture. By doing this I could see if the students had grasp the difference between the two and also how the two work.

I thought many characteristics came to mind when looking at this unit but I thought number 6 fit the best. This characteristic stated "we believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of content". This characteristic works because by doing this lesson I as the teacher had to have a full knowledge of the unit. If i didn't know my stuff on teaching weathering and erosion then my students would have grasp the content. This was a new topic for the students so I was the one introducing the topic to them and also lead them in discovery about the topic. As teachers we have to know what we are teaching. If we don't know it then how are we expected to teach it!