Essentials of Microteaching

Teaching is an activity which requires a multitude of skills to be displayed at an appropriate time. Mere awareness of these skills is not sufficient. They have to be practiced and honed over a period of time until the educator acquires naturalization on these skills.

During the B.Ed. course, student teachers are taught  and made to practice microteaching. This article tries to present this topic in brief.

Essentials of Microteaching:

·        It is a series of sessions conducted to gain a hold on the most important teaching skills one at a time.

·        The idea to arrange such a session to teach the skills of teaching one at a time was proposed by Prof. Dwight Allen of Stanford University.

·        Each session of microteaching involves six steps to be followed, namely, planning, teaching, feedback, re-planning, re-teaching and re-feedback.

·        The activity of microteaching has three stages, namely, the pre-microteaching, the micro-teaching and the post-microteaching stages respectively.

·        The pre-microteaching stage consists of  an orientation programme where the teacher educator or the assigned mentor lectures on the concept of microteaching and its history.

·        It is followed by a demonstration of a sample skill by the mentor.

·        In the microteaching stage, 5-10 students of a particular methodology gather in a separate room along with the mentor.

·        Every student in this small group is assigned a small topic to teach for five minutes and given time to plan or prepare.

·        However,  during the teaching activity, the emphasis is to be given on one particular skill of teaching say the introduction of the topic.

·        Depending on the skill assigned to display the student teacher prepares for the teaching act.

·        While the student teacher displays the skill for five minutes, his or her friends assess the performance along with the mentor using a teaching assessment battery.

·        The demonstration of the particular skill under study is recorded live and used for refinement, assessment and record purpose.

·        Every skill has certain components and the assessment during the feedback stage is based on whether the components of the demonstrated skills are displayed at a satisfactory level or not.

·        The final score is reduced to a three, a four or a five. Five is excellent, four is good and three is for an average performance.

·        If most of the fellow student teachers give a score less than three, the student teacher under assessment has to replan, reteach and seek feedback again.

·        In this manner, every student teacher in the group of  5-10 students goes through the cycle of microteaching for a certain number of skills identified by the mentor to be taught during the session.

·        After the second stage, the final phase of the post - microteaching session begins.

·        By this stage, the student teacher is expected to get rid of the stage fear and display and a satisfactory amount of command over the taught teaching skills.

·        At this stage, the mentor welcomes clarification of doubts and provided added tips on the skills of teaching.

·        Sharing of personal anecdotes and experiences prove valuable for the student teachers. On the completion of all the phases of microteaching session,the student teachers prepare a project report individually on both their chosen methodologies and submit them to their respective mentors.

·        Along with the project report, a cd containing the recordings of all the demonstrated skills during the session is also submitted.

·        Finally, the students are assigned schools in the vicinity for their intership training for 45 days, as directed by the District Education Officer.

Conclusion: Classroom management is an art and a science. It goes beyond the mastery of the subject taught. Dexterity in the skills of teaching acquired in a phased-out manner during the microteaching classes prove invaluable to the student teachers during their teaching internship under real teaching – learning environment.