Category: M01ODL Observations & Feedback

Here I will be adding details of observations I have taken to witness best practice, with my reflections, as well as official observations of sessions I have led.

The names of those I have observed will remain anonymous on this public page.

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Microteaching, 11th Jun 2018

I am finally uploading all my micro-teaching reflections from paper to online. I wish I had done this sooner, but it kept falling to the bottom of my blogging list!

So, what is mirco-teaching? Why did I do it? What did I do? What did I learn?

Micro-teaching is a standard activity in teacher training, so it made sense that in the PGCAPHE we put into practice our course learning and our own teaching experience into this formative assessment. Micro-teaching is an activity that involves the trainee teacher to present a small slice of teaching (approx. 10-20 mins) to a small group of supportive peers. The peers then give constructive feedback, which can be use to develop practice in the classroom. Although the assessment was compulsory, I really wanted to gain feedback on whether my FE approach had grown into a teaching style that appropriately matched HE.

On this occasion, we were asked to plan a 10 minute micro-teaching session on a subject we were unfamiliar with. In the distant future, I’d like to consider Sociology lecturing, so I took a stab at teaching semiotics. When planning the session of semiotics, I considered methods to really stretch my teaching abilities, but also what I would enjoy. I decided to take swear words as my method to teach, as I believed this would shock and engage learners and support memory retention of the subject. In my spare time, I also enjoy crafting through the use of waste, I take objects that are ugly and make them beautiful. Recently, I had started taking ugly words and re-owning them into art, so I had plenty in mind for teaching an engaging lesson.

Please see my lesson plan and slides as an mp4 here:

The feedback I was given by my peers and the facilitator was fantastic. I had really been able to own the activities and teaching tactics to shock and engage my peers. My teaching style was appropriate to HE and I was able to provide support and enable higher learning during activity time.  Next time, I would make my lesson plan a little more detailed, ensuring group discussion time and other flexible activities were clearly included for my peers to review.

Please see detailed feedback provided here (apologies for the quality of the scan):  Microteaching_Feedback

As a member of the group, I also gave my peers constructive feedback on micro-teaching sessions provided. As I have qualified in teaching and have actively taken part in FE teaching development, I felt I took more of a critical member of the group. My group were fantastic to work with, but in such settings it can be difficult to give constructive feedback, which I was happy to contribute in.

Of the sessions provided (materials for all here:Microteaching_Peers ), I really enjoyed the micro-teachings where we were able to actively be involved in the learning, for example with scuba diving (pg. 3) or questioning faith and religion (pg. 4). I found it harder to engage with micro-teaching that was teacher-led and involved lots of teacher-talking. It is clear why student-led learning is so important.

Overall, I really enjoyed the micro-teaching session and I have a lot more confidence in my abilities and teaching style. Thank you to my peer group for a lovely afternoon of teaching and learning!