Approaching microteaching a novice lesson to twenty- and thirty-somethings is always a fun and
confusing task. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of imagining that my
classmates are much younger than they are (sometimes easier than I’d imagined
;-) ) One problem I have is that since
my classmates don’t know my class, even though they might be told the ACTFL
level, they are often acting in a different ZPD than my students. It means
getting “output” on a different level and having sometimes less classroom
interaction/need for creative correction to work with than I usually do.
Watching this video, I think my MIC techniques are becoming
more consistent both in the classroom and in the microteaching setting, as I
learn how to best suit my actions to aid students’ understanding. I’m getting
better at eliciting answers through scaffolding and gesture to minimize teacher
talk (as I did when working at the whiteboard). However, often when I’m
directing students to learn new TLC, creating dialogue questions that are
comprehensible is difficult. When this class is faced with a teacher telling
them how to ask a student another question, there are often TOO MANY pronouns
involved for their comprehension level. I think my whiteboard use, in this
lesson as in others, might have been a bit more detailed to help them compare and
understand the variations in grammar. Also,
as with the situation of the word clue, I often take for granted that my
students know a vocabulary word I myself might not have taught them. In these
cases, I still need a lot of work on how to efficiently teach subsidiary words
(meta words?) without preteaching too much and getting away from a TDBU format.
I’m still unhappy with my amount of teacher talk during both
directions and in general. Here I tried
to allow students to “fill-in-the blanks” to help create instructions, but I’m
still goal-oriented so that fell a bit flat. For example, when I gave
instructions for the “clue” activity, my teacher talk including the
fill-in-the-blanks speech pattern, but
still used many lines of teacher talk. In the real classroom, as can be seen with my
previous videos, my real students are eager to speak but often it needs to be
guided so that it’s comprehensible and constructive for all involved. Often
there’s just a lot of noise and chatter permeating our purposeful dialogue. While
I want all students to talk with each other and be involved, a high percent
will still be tempted to scaffold each other IN KOREAN in more detailed
groupwork. I think I should have found a
way to get students doing T>S>S>T a bit more for the sake of output.
Also, to my dismay, while my face is animated and I would hope encouraging of
interaction, my t-talk is more evaluative than communicative, especially while doing
comprehension checks. Definitely something to work on.
A previous peer review mentioned that I moved around very
little and remained static in the classroom. I found that this microteaching
showed a bit of improvement, but I still find my own voice and gesture less
helpful than I would hope for. The classroom is large, and mine in school is a
bit smaller - so I THINK I manage to move around closer to students and use the
space more creatively to make input comprehensible.
Overall, I'm glad to see SOME progress since my last microteaching, but am looking forward to the day when I'm not constantly cringing at some awkward MIC technique or whiteboard usage mistake!
Watch the awkwardness here:
Megan, I think you had some very good revelations in your reflection above. Relying less on explanations and involving your students in T S S T would be a great way to cut down on teacher talk. During the opening you asked a few students about the instructions, but I wasn't sure if everyone followed. I found that the initial listening exercise was a little bit long for your target audience, it might have been more comprehensible had it been split into two parts. You also mentioned your whiteboard usage, I think it was effective but could have been more so if you would have incorporated different color markers. That's something I didn't do in my MT either.
ReplyDeleteYou did an excellent job using gestures to make your instructions clear when you opened the presentation and consistently used gestures throughout. I thought that your explanations were easy to understand and your speech was a good consistent speed. I liked your handout you distributed, it was easy to understand and the magnifying glass was a nice touch. You made good use of questions, and having students restate a previous student's answer in their own words. By the end of your MT all students had been engaged in a questions or restatement. Well done, and I'm glad you noticed improvement from your previous MT.