Before our presentation Kizuna and I discussed with each other many times and it was really hard to come up with the activities that would be interesting and engaging to a class of all excellent classmates. Even though I did quite a few micro-teaching and presentations when i was at my home university before, that was my first time presenting in a foreign context and i knew it was not going to be easy.
We started quite well with the explanation of the first activity but then what we were afraid the most did happen: the questions were quite easy to the two teams and we wasted a large amount of time on timing for the answer. Also, the fact that there were quite a few students absent in the class that day did affect our arrangement. Luckily we received on-the-spot suggestions from our teacher and our classmates and finally were able to adjust our plan. The second activity went a bit wild but the follow-up discussion about novice teachers and experienced ones was really interesting to me and i'm glad our short skit was able to arouse quite a few issues for everyone to think about.
Though the presentation is not a requirement for me, i am glad that i did it because i was able to learn about things and skills that i would never know unless i myself actually carry it out. The saying "Learning is by doing" works perfectly for me in this case. I also came to realize that as teachers it's better to give students a task and make them produce a particular and real product at the same time. In other words, as Dr Smidt suggested, students should do something while they're discussing in order to be fully involved in the lesson. This would be a really good lesson for me and i'll keep that in mind in my future teaching.
Also, the next part about peer teaching and lesson plan review was very much fruitful and useful. I was able to discuss with my groupmates about my own lesson plan as well as learn from theirs. The 10-minute micro-teaching were also very effective and i can feel our group worked very hard and we had fun at the same time as well.
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2 comments:
Mai, I loved your presentation. I thought the game was very original and you and Kizuna raised very interesting questions. I too, think our lesson plan group worked well together.
I thought your presentation was awesome! The half hour flew by, and I don't think you wasted any time at all! You were flexible and open to adaptation, as all good teachers should be. You VERY effectively showed us exactly how flexible a teacher should be instead of just telling us "A teacher should be flexible!" You engaged the students, you made us laugh, you made us have fun, and you made us LEARN while we did it. I loved it!
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