DO YOU WANT TO BE THE BEST TEACHER? IF YES, Then you need to be equipped with few teaching skills that are necessary “to be the best”, that’s why during the teaching training the pupil teacher or the teacher trainee develops the teaching skills that are going to be beneficial in the future real life situations and that is called MICROTEACHING As the name suggest teaching for a short period of time.
After reading this article, You will learn WHAT IS MICROTEACHING? , WHAT IS MICROTEACHING CYCLE? WHAT ARE MICROTEACHING SKILLS? and many other answers related to microteaching. I hope this is the article you were searching for a long time.
MEANING
The term Microteaching was coined by Dwight Allen ( D.W. Allen) of Stanford University in 1963 for developing teaching behavior and activities. It is a simulated social skill teaching for teacher trainees to modify their behavior as the concept applied here is useful in pre service and in service stages of professional development.
It is a scaled down teaching as a single unit of a lesson is selected for 5-10 minutes to small group of students comprising 5-10 students and only one skill is focused at a time, Classmates and teacher trainer observe his teaching and provide feedback to improve his teaching.
In India,, Microteaching was introduced by Prof. D.D. Tiwari in 1967 at CPI Allahabad which is now called Prayagraj.
DEFINITION
Microteaching is scaled down teaching encounter.
Allen
Microteaching is real teaching, reduced in time, number of students and range of activities.
B. M. Shore
COMPONENTS OF MICROTEACHING
- Microteaching situations- Class Size, Length of content.
- Teaching Skills – One at a time.
- Pupil Teacher- Develops different teaching capabilities.
- Microteaching Laboratory- To collect necessary facilities of feedback.
- Feedback Device- to improve teaching.
CHARACTERISTICS
- Real teaching with less complexities.
- Class time and size both are reduced.
- Proper time is provided to teacher to practice a particular teaching skill.
- Controlled by feedback.
- Prepares Effective teachers.
- Performed in a controlled environment with 5-10 students.
- Teacher trainer provides written feedback or video recording can be used.
- Individualized technique.
STEPS OF MICRO TEACHING
Generally, 6 steps are involved in micro teaching cycle but when representing it in a diagrammatic form and calculating the time taken planning time is not included. So, the total time taken in a microteaching cycle is 36 minutes. The steps are described below-
1. PLANNING –
It involves selection of the topic and related content of such nature in which components of skill under practice is involved. Topic is analyzed into Teacher’s activities and student’s activities and it is arranged in a sequential manner to maximize the application of the components of skill.
2. TEACHING-
It involves the teaching attempts of the teacher trainee to use the components of the skill in desirable situations coming up in his instructional process as per his/ her planning of activities. If the situations are different from the planned one, the teacher modifies his/her behavior as per the circumstances. A Teacher should be confident enough to handle the classroom situations.
3. FEEDBACK-
Feedback refers to the information provided to teacher trainee by his/her trainer and peers on the basis of his/her performance. It helps him to strengthen his Abilities and removing his/her flaws. Feedback plays an important role as it directs the teacher trainee to improve his/her performance in desired direction.
4. RE- PLANNING –
After getting the feedback the pupil teacher or teacher trainee replans his/her lesson incorporating the points of strengths and removing weaknesses during teaching in previous attempt either on the same topic or on another topic but skill focused is similar.
5. RE- TEACHING-
It involves teaching the same group if topic is changed and new group if the topic is same, It is done to break monotony of class. The teacher trainee teaches the class with new energy and perform better than his previous attempt.
6. RE- FEEDBACK-
It is an important component as teacher trainee again gets the feedback about his/her performance. If he/ She still lacks the skill, the whole cycle begins again as practice is the mother of mastery.
MICRO TEACHING SKILLS
A Teaching Skill can be defined as a set of behavior and activities which are effective in bringing about desired changes in pupil teachers or teacher trainee.
INTRODUCTION SKILL
It is also known as lesson presentation. here, previous knowledge is correlated to present knowledge. All questions are connected in series and the last question has a direct link with the topic to be taught and generally 3-5 questions are asked.
STIMULUS VARIATION SKILL
Hand Gestures and positions are changed by teachers, Movement of hands and legs, eyes, voice modulation is performed at regular intervals by the teacher to eliminate monotony of the class.
ILLUSTRATION WITH EXAMPLE
When it is difficult for students to understand a particular concept, the teacher clarifies it with the help of suitable examples, charts, models and other teaching aids. Generally, illustrations are connected to the real life.
REINFORCEMENT SKILL
It is a technique which influence the response of learners. When reinforcement is provided judiciously it motivates the learner to achieve the desired learning objectives. It helps the learners to develop a positive self esteem and also discourages the undesirable behavior.
EXPLANATION SKILL
It is used to facilitate the concept formation as a detailed explanation is provided by the teacher. A set of inter related statements are used by the teacher in order to increase the understanding of pupils about a particular concept or idea.
QUESTIONING SKILL
Probing questions to the students is being practiced from ancient time for instructional purpose. So, the questions asked by the teacher should be meaningful, clear and concise, grammatically correct, simple and straight forward. It helps in drawing attention, making learners active and test their understanding and comprehension at different stages of the learning a lesson.
DEMONSTRATION SKILL
It is generally used in science teaching as it facilitates the complete understanding of a concept. A particular experiment is demonstrated by the teacher and learners observe him to connect the theoretical knowledge with the practical knowledge.
BLACK BOARD WRITING SKILL
A teacher should be skilled enough to write neatly and beautifully on a blackboard or a whiteboard, The handwriting should be legible and diagrams, figures, charts should be neat and clear to make learning effective.
ADVANTAGES
- Effective method to improve teaching behavior.
- helps teacher get awareness and insight about classroom problems.
- A teacher trainee can develop different teaching skills.
- Promotes Self Evaluation by pupil teacher.
- Successful method for individualized training.
- Develops critical thinking and observation power of teacher trainees.
DISADVANTAGES
- Setting up a Microteaching Laboratory is very expensive So, arrangements can’t be done in all training colleges.
- Requires trained teachers to train pupil teachers.
- It is a simulated technique so can not predict the real life complexities in teaching.
- Only one teaching skill is practiced at a time so, it is a time consuming process.
CONCLUSION
Microteaching helps in the modification of teacher’s behavior by equipping him/her with the skills required during the instructional process. The purpose of microteaching is to prepare the teacher trainee to become the real teacher that’s why the classroom complexities, number of students, time duration and topic size is reduced. Skill development is focused to make effective teachers.
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