Standard 4 - Learning Environment – The competent teacher structures a safe and healthy learning environment that facilitates cultural and linguistic responsiveness, emotional well-being, self-efficacy, positive social interaction, mutual respect, active engagement, academic risk-taking, self-motivation, and personal goal-setting.
Artifact Description:
This artifact is a website I created for a second-grade classroom using Wix. It contains several pages that explains my rules, expectations, rewards, punishments, procedures, and diversity that I would use in my classroom. I created this website to keep the parents up to date on their child learning journey, also to build a strong and positive relationship with the parents because the involvement of the parents is the number one reason for the child's academic success. I also explained in detail to the students’ parents my teaching style and different strategies I would use to educate and teach their children in my classroom. I created this website in the Spring of 2020 for my General Methods class at Trinity Christian College. The purpose of making this website to familiarize us how to design our own classroom in the future when we become teachers.
Connection to the IPTS standard:
I never knew the importance of planning and the effort it takes when creating an entire and a well-put together classroom website until I did this project. This artifact perfectly describes standard 4 because I had to come up with procedures and expectation to make sure all my students are feeling safe, ready to learn, and reaching their full potential. which is stated in standard 4, a competent teacher “knows strategies to implement behavior management and behavior intervention planning to ensure a safe and productive learning environment” (4G). Standard 4 also mentions that a competent teacher “creates clear expectations and procedures for communication and behavior and a physical setting conducive to achieving classroom goals” (4J). My number one priority is to make all my students feel safe and productive in my classroom and I made it noticeably clear and vivid on my website.
Description of what I learned:
I learned lots of new, beneficial, and important information when I was creating my class’s website. I have seen how important especially for a new teacher to set the procedures, rules, and teaching strategies in a fun way while keeping up with the technology within the world we live in. I plan to use most of the ideas that I have on my website in my future classroom. I also kept into consideration that some parents do not have access to my website; therefore, I created a letter summing up my website to parents that cannot access it. A classroom website will allow me to post homework, display my rules and expectation, communicate with students and parents, share news and announcements, and provide helpful resources for students to use. Teacher’s website is an important and effective tool to use to help bridge the communication between home and school. As I teacher, I will use my website to share concepts like my teaching strategies and styles which will help me to see the overall class and their needs. I am glad and very happy that I had the chance to create my website which will help me in teaching my class when I became a teacher by displaying all the important information for both my students and their families.