Characteristic 4

4. We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students.
Definition: A facilitator is one who can either provide appropriate learning experiences and resources or find someone else to provide them. Learning is the student's active process of building meanings and knowledge.
Rationale: We believe this because classrooms have students with a variety of learning styles, prior experiences, cultural backgrounds, capabilities, etc. Each of these students is entitled to educational experiences, which allow achievement of fullest potential. To provide such experiences, the novice teacher must recognize learners' needs, assess his or her own ability to meet them, and coordinate necessary resources.

Today I did a lesson on the census. I made a large map of the U.S. and a map of the World. We colored in the places where each student was born. This is why we needed the world map. This was really fun for an introduction into a census lesson. Then we looked at a population map and moved towars other higher level thinking activties.
Since some of the students would have a hard time with this actvitiy I created a lesson for the two lower level groups that was focused on practicing their site words. We had cards with words on them that we read, played a game, and then used flags to recognize the words in a story.
Both groups of students had a really good time doing the activities. I think that I was able to incorperate the students cultural differences into my census lesson as a great asset to the lesson. The students doing the site words lesson were able to practice doing something that they really needed practce on, site words.
I think these activities fit into this characteristic because the students needs were met and the lessons were designed for particular groups of students.