Microteaching #2 Redo Reflection

Here is a link to my second microteaching redo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1yQPgavlMI

As I stated before, I think that this microteaching went a lot better than the previous one. I think that the interactions are much more dialogic, and I find dialogic conversations much more interesting than monologic conversations.  In this microteaching, the open ended questions yielded some unexpected answers. Ella in particular uttered something like the man left his wife in the bathroom because he killed her. This was unexpected, and it makes teaching classes much more interesting. And the unplanned is always what everyone remembers.

As far as student discourse in the microteaching, I did get all the students to talk.  I like the student asking questions to student strategy. It encourages students to pay attention during class. And it provides students with public speaking practice. A student needs to speak loudly and clearly for the other students to understand what he or she said.  And nobody likes to repeat themselves multiple times. I did notice from my last week at the middle school; students spoke numbers very quickly, and none of the other students were able to understand them. I guess you could call this pronunciation practice.

One thing that Steve did that I didn't do was choral repetition. I think that is a much more effective strategy than getting individual students to repeat the directions. This past week, the only students that repeated the directions in class were the ones who were paying attention. Maybe I should have all the students stand up and repeat it as a class. Probably one other strategy that I will try is to have the students paraphrase it in Korean. I know that L1 usage should be minimal, but comprehension of directions is important as well.

During this microteaching, Type 1 and Type 2 activities are much clearer. I do think giving comprehension questions to do while reading the text is very important. The students can use the questions to look for and spot the important points. I must admit that I use the same strategy while doing reading for this course. During next week's lesson, I try the same activities that I employed during the microteaching.

So, after much grumbling, I do think that this activity was useful. I think that actually doing an activity is much more illuminating that just reading about it.  Probably the only thing that I did during the microteaching that I would not do during an actual teaching activity is a strict adherence to the clock. The ten minute time limit made me feel like I needed to set stricter time limits that I otherwise would not. During my normal class, I would have done the time limits for the actual readings, but everything else felt a little rushed. For the comp check, maybe I would have given them double the amount of time as I did in the microteaching.

The other thing I would have changed is the amount of pair work. I would have done more of it. Rather than respond individually during class, I would have had them consult with their partner before responding during class.