Jason's Microteaching Reflections

PLEASE POST ABOUT: (1) 3 TIPS FOR TEACHING/ CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ PLANNING GLEANED FROM MICROTEACHING. (2) GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES FROM YOUR OWN OR OTHER LESSON OBSERVATION.


Protip #1: Always start with 'Once Upon a Time...' (Or rather, storytelling is one of the best ways to teach literature) 

I remember myself saying, at the very beginning of the semester, that the act of teaching literature is the act of storytelling. This notion was reinforced through the various micro-teaching sessions: from Samuel's simple made-up story to illustrate his point about 'fairness' to Brennan's hilarious story of being discriminated, and even to the silly story of the man climbing (and falling from) the plot diagram I came up with during my session. Beyond all the multimodal materials we have at our fingertips (such as comic strips or video clips), I feel that simple storytelling remains the most effective and imaginative way to engage students, because it requires an act of imagination (as opposed to having it visually flashed out in front of them), a skill that is absolutely essential to the appreciation of literary texts.


Protip #2: Too many cooks spoil the broth (Or rather, trying to do too many things ruin the lesson)

The beauty of literature is that everything is interrelated: but the problem about teaching literature is that you cannot really teach this interrelatedness in the classroom.  We all know that literary form is linked to technique  that is linked to narrative that is linked to conflict that is linked to theme that is linked to characterization. However, it is absolutely impossible to compress everything to the duration of one period: and so instead of trying to teach this interrelatedness directly in a single sitting, we should teach them the individual elements, then pull everything together at the end. Across the various micro-teaching sessions, there seemed to be a distinction between lessons that tried to achieve much and did little, and lessons that tried to teach one thing but made a huge impact on students understanding.  The flip side, exploring some aspects of interrelatedness also helps push students towards higher-order thinking: we must thus find the balance between depth and breadth. 


Protip #3: If unable to swim, enter at the shallow end! (Or rather, point of entry is everything)

Framing is incredibly important.  Through the course of my micro-teaching, I realized that there are many ways to approach the teaching of literary elements and devices: choosing the right point-of-entry is important to ensure student understanding.  If a ineffective point of entry is employed (like in my own micro-teaching), no amount of scaffolding will make up for the confusion that will result from students feeling disorientated.  Thus, I have to consider carefully what the students know at that point of the lesson, how the lesson is situated in the overall unit plan, and how each lesson element will flow into one another.  Throwing students into the 'deep end' and leaving out the swimming lessons will result in subsequent drowning.