Microteaching Reflection

Prior to our demo teaching in UPIS, we had to do a microteaching session with our classmates. Due to the storm and class cancellations, instead of two meetings, we had to cram everything into one day so as to push through with the scheduled demo teaching.

At first it was a little overwhelming because instead of focusing on just the first part of our demo which was the literature, we also had to also do the skills development part which was honestly the harder chunk. If in the literature half, the problematic part was unlocking of words; in the skills development, it was teaching the lesson without really having to state the rules explicitly.

Before the microteaching, I thought that I had the grammar teaching part covered since I already taught this lesson to my students before.  But it turned out to be a totally different experience since we are using a different method of teaching. When I was teaching direct and indirect objects to Koreans before, we went for a sentence pattern approach. We state right away that this is this, and that is that. We give examples and so on and so forth. But this time, we had to draw out the definitions and generalizations from the students themselves. When you first look at it, it’s really hard because most of the time, the students expect you to give them the answers. But then again, rethinking on this, maybe it really is a better method since you do not bank on the notion that they have prior knowledge but on the belief that they have the capacity to figure it out on their own without having to spoon feed them. 

For the microteaching of course, we had it easy since our classmates were our students. They participated well, most probably because we were all on the same boat. In the same way, we participated and enjoyed their presentations. They also gave feedback that helped us later on with the group teaching in UPIS.

But that doesn't mean that our microteaching would be flawless. The main fault was our lesson plan. We had revised it a couple of times, but still it wasn't the best, nor would I say that it was even appropriate. We learned a great deal from out classmates. Admittedly, theirs was a better presentation of the same topic we had. We learned that we had to fix the second half of our lesson which was the skills development. We had to redo a lot of our sample sentences and worksheets. After the microteaching, our lesson plan had an overhaul. I am really thankful that we had a microteaching session. If not, we would have failed very very badly in our group teaching. 

There are many things I have learned in it. First is that you should always check your samples and exercise items –all of them—if they are covered well by the definition you gave. Second, you can make your students do the same thing over and over again without them being tired of it if you present it in different creative ways. Third, being on time lessens the anxiety. Fourth and the most important one: no lesson plan is ever final. There will always be revisions and you must be ready to make them no matter how little time you have.

All in all, I believe that the microteaching has helped us a lot in preparation for our group teaching. It is not the perfect simulation but it prepared us and helped us find holes that we can still fix. Sadly, there isn't always a microteaching session for all the lesson plans that we will make in the future. That being said, I think we all should practice and try to learn as much as we can from these experience.