Task 5: Reflection
Microteaching is a professional development tool used by teachers
and trainee teachers to better understand their teaching-learning process
(Horwitz, 2007). It is a tool for reflection. Looking at the peer-evaluation where
assessment, evaluation and feedback carried out on my micro-teaching
session, I have identified my strengths, weaknesses and ways for
improvement on the practice stage of the lesson.
First and foremost, the teaching and learning materials are highly
relevant to the module and the stage of the lesson. I have prepared enlarged
picture with dotted C lines, writing board and mini writing board as the
teaching and learning materials. According to Richards and Renandya (2002),
materials play a large role in making knowledge accessible to a learner and
can encourage a student to engage with knowledge in different ways. To make
the knowledge accessible to every pupil, I hung on a writing board on the
whiteboard. Thereby, every pupil can see my demonstration clearly when I
taught with the writing board. Besides, I also prepared a mini writing board to
each pupil in order to engage pupils with the knowledge. As a result, pupils
were given opportunities to use the writing board to do practise by writing the
letter C on the lines neatly. Therefore, the application of teaching and learning
materials is one of the strengths of my lesson which are very creative and
highly motivating to the pupils.
1
Moreover, the instructions were clear as pupils understood what they
need to do. Michael (2011) stated that it is best to compose ourselves first,
decide what it is really want pupils to do, and then give it to pupils straight. I
have followed this ways of giving instruction. During my lesson planning, I have
thought through the flow of the activities and wrote the instructions in step in
my lesson plan. For example, during the activity of writing the letter C on the
mini writing board, I guided pupils by giving instructions step by step. In the
midst of giving and following instructions, I have made sure that sufficient time
is given to make sure that pupils followed the steps and worked in the same
pace. Therefore, giving clear instruction by telling pupils exactly what I want is
a good teaching which I have achieved excellently in this part.
On the other hand, my facilitating skills on checking pupils progress
should be improved. According to Sue (2013), facilitating pupils progress is a
straightforward approach to making secure judgements about the progress of
pupils work and what they need to do next. Although I have worked on
facilitating pupils progress on writing the letter C, I should be doing it more
adequately and effectively. In fact, the distance between pupil and I was too
far and inappropriate when I facilitated pupils progress of work. Instead, I
should improve my body posture so that pupils will feel more secure and
comfortable with teachers guidance. Therefore, I will improve my facilitating
skills on checking pupils progress of work in my future lesson.
2
Besides, teachers demonstration on doing an activity should be
improved. In this part, I did not make full use of the writing board when I was
demonstrating the steps of writing the letter C on the blank provided.
According to Lewin (2012), classroom demonstration is an effective way to
help students grasp important concepts and principles. Instead, I should
demonstrate the steps for several times before asking pupils to do on it. This
is because it is important for teacher to repeat the demonstration so that to
make sure that pupils receive sufficient input, learn the important concepts
and principles and know how to do when they are doing on their own.
Therefore, I will make sure that I give adequate classroom demonstration in
my future lesson.
Furthermore, my pronunciation should be improved. I have
pronounced certain words inaccurately. It is a very terrible mistake as pupils
might just end up learning wrong pronunciation. According to Badger and
White (2000), imitation is one way in which people learn. Clear and accurate
pronunciation is very crucial because pupils will learn the pronunciation when
listening to the language. Missed pronunciation can really affect pupils
learning as pupils might imitate the wrong pronunciation. To prevent this flaw
from happening again, I will make sure that I look out all the pronunciation of
the words which I am not certain with by referring to dictionary. By doing so,
it might decrease the rate of me pronouncing inaccurate pronunciation.
Therefore, I will work on it to improve my pronunciation of English language.
3
All in all, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses through this
mini-lesson. I will work on it to enhance my strengths and improve my teaching.
Microteaching certainly helps me to develop and master important teaching
skills through the feedback given to which improvements to the lesson are
made based on the recommendations and suggestions.
