My artifact is our class constitution that we created during our simulation lesson.

As a class we took the preamble to the constitution and took out some of the describing words. Then as a class we filled in the blanks to create a creed for our classroom that we wanted to hold ourselves to over the course of the year. We did this activity during our class simulation so in a typical class the class constitution would be used all year but in our class it was for demonstrative purposes. This artifact was chosen because it is a new and creative way to bring civics into the classroom. It brings a lot of different things from Curriculum and Instruction into the classroom while being informative and educational. This artifact addresses the Illinois Standard of Reading, Writing, and Oral Communication (Standard 6). The activity included students reading the preamble to the constitution and then discussing its meaning as a class. As a class discussion was held to create the class constitution, students were learning how to orally communicate with one another and the teacher. They also learned how to strengthen their writing skills by having to decide on words that would fit into the class constitution and also apply to the class as a whole. This artifact really represents how I have grown as a pre-service teacher. When I do things in my classroom, or even in classroom simulations, I now think of brining the Illinois standards into my lessons. This also represents my growth because I have learned how to make activities that incorporate more than one standard in them, I actually had to chose which one I wanted this artifact to go specifically under.