Micro Teaching
Micro Teaching Micro-teaching has become more and more popular for teachers who want to become official teachers.
Even for people who already are teachers who want to analyze their teaching skills.
But you don't need to worry or freak out before doing this.
It is nothing to freak out about, you just need to do some planning and preparation and then you should be fine.
Watching yourself teach on video may seem impossible, but you can do it.
Just focus and prepare yourself and you'll do great.
Most of the sessions you do will be a minimum of 20-30 minutes.
So you need to plan a lesson with students that will last at least that long.
Aiming for at least 30 minutes is a good plan.
If you've never done a micro-teach, don't worry.
There will likely be other teachers or your peers watching, but its mainly only a learning experience.
Planning Obviously, planning for your micro-teach is very important.
As with anything else, if you don't plan and understand what you are going to do, you probably won't do your best.
So plan what you want to talk about and what you plan on doing to break the ice.
Chances are you've never worked with any of these students before.
The age of the students you'll be teaching will vary.
Obviously once you know a bit about who you'll be teaching, you'll want to plan your lesson to be age-appropriate.
Practice your lesson and time yourself to make sure the timing is good.
A lesson you thought would take 45 minutes may end up only taking 35.
So you should maybe edit your lesson because normally everything seems shorter than planned once your actually performing it.
Plan on how your going to interact with your students, and how you want to appear to your peers.
You are trying to learn things to help you become a better teacher.
If you find that you get nervous easily, focus and practice staying calm and focused.
Just get a good feel of how you want your lesson to flow and how and when you are going to interact too.
Preparing When preparing for your speech, you want to think about props and things like that.
You also want to prepare for what to do if something fails.
Like if an electronic device stops working, or maybe it was never even working in the first place.
You want to have a back up plan so you'll be ready for anything.
When preparing, you want to maybe perform your lesson with other people you are close to.
That way you can be prepared and get a feel for how the interaction you do will work.
There will need to be a decent bit of interaction, you can't teach people if they can never ask questions or anything.
It might be convenient to know their names too.
It's also a good idea to prepare notes for yourself.
These can help you stay on track if you get nervous or if you forget what your supposed to say next.
You probably don't want to write something out to follow word for word, but some index cards with notes and guidelines is a very good idea.
These can serve as a sort of prompt, and if you find yourself getting nervous these can help keep you grounded and focused.
Then again, you probably don't want to be looking at notes every two seconds because that won't look too good on video.
Delivery Once you've done all the planning and preparation, the delivery of the actual speech shouldn't be too difficult.
Just be sure to have all your notes and all the electronic devices you'll need.
Be polite but forward to your audience.
You don't want them acting up while your teaching, but you don't really want to be downright rude either.
Just make sure you portray yourself as calm, cool, and collected.
Even if you are nervous, it is highly unlikely it will show.
If you have everything ready, you'll be perfectly fine.
So the delivery of your micro-teach shouldn't be difficult at all after you've done everything before-hand.
That isn't to say though that having nerves isn't normal.
Most people feel a bit weird when they know a camera is watching them.
So you feeling weird isn't anything unusual either.
Just focus and try your best to stay calm.
So if you've taken all the appropriate steps, you should be able to handle your micro-teach no problem!
Even for people who already are teachers who want to analyze their teaching skills.
But you don't need to worry or freak out before doing this.
It is nothing to freak out about, you just need to do some planning and preparation and then you should be fine.
Watching yourself teach on video may seem impossible, but you can do it.
Just focus and prepare yourself and you'll do great.
Most of the sessions you do will be a minimum of 20-30 minutes.
So you need to plan a lesson with students that will last at least that long.
Aiming for at least 30 minutes is a good plan.
If you've never done a micro-teach, don't worry.
There will likely be other teachers or your peers watching, but its mainly only a learning experience.
Planning Obviously, planning for your micro-teach is very important.
As with anything else, if you don't plan and understand what you are going to do, you probably won't do your best.
So plan what you want to talk about and what you plan on doing to break the ice.
Chances are you've never worked with any of these students before.
The age of the students you'll be teaching will vary.
Obviously once you know a bit about who you'll be teaching, you'll want to plan your lesson to be age-appropriate.
Practice your lesson and time yourself to make sure the timing is good.
A lesson you thought would take 45 minutes may end up only taking 35.
So you should maybe edit your lesson because normally everything seems shorter than planned once your actually performing it.
Plan on how your going to interact with your students, and how you want to appear to your peers.
You are trying to learn things to help you become a better teacher.
If you find that you get nervous easily, focus and practice staying calm and focused.
Just get a good feel of how you want your lesson to flow and how and when you are going to interact too.
Preparing When preparing for your speech, you want to think about props and things like that.
You also want to prepare for what to do if something fails.
Like if an electronic device stops working, or maybe it was never even working in the first place.
You want to have a back up plan so you'll be ready for anything.
When preparing, you want to maybe perform your lesson with other people you are close to.
That way you can be prepared and get a feel for how the interaction you do will work.
There will need to be a decent bit of interaction, you can't teach people if they can never ask questions or anything.
It might be convenient to know their names too.
It's also a good idea to prepare notes for yourself.
These can help you stay on track if you get nervous or if you forget what your supposed to say next.
You probably don't want to write something out to follow word for word, but some index cards with notes and guidelines is a very good idea.
These can serve as a sort of prompt, and if you find yourself getting nervous these can help keep you grounded and focused.
Then again, you probably don't want to be looking at notes every two seconds because that won't look too good on video.
Delivery Once you've done all the planning and preparation, the delivery of the actual speech shouldn't be too difficult.
Just be sure to have all your notes and all the electronic devices you'll need.
Be polite but forward to your audience.
You don't want them acting up while your teaching, but you don't really want to be downright rude either.
Just make sure you portray yourself as calm, cool, and collected.
Even if you are nervous, it is highly unlikely it will show.
If you have everything ready, you'll be perfectly fine.
So the delivery of your micro-teach shouldn't be difficult at all after you've done everything before-hand.
That isn't to say though that having nerves isn't normal.
Most people feel a bit weird when they know a camera is watching them.
So you feeling weird isn't anything unusual either.
Just focus and try your best to stay calm.
So if you've taken all the appropriate steps, you should be able to handle your micro-teach no problem!