FLASHBACK: MICRO-CLASS

Day: July 13th, 2009
Time: 9:00am
Place: Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas, Torre Docente, 7th floor
The class: What did you do yesterday? Talking about chores and activities you did using simple past.
The subjects: EFL teacher trainees and current students of Methodology EFL teaching pretending to be beginner students of EFL from different countries and backgrounds.
All right, so this was my final chance to prove that I was able to prepare and teach an EFL class using all the language teaching theories and methods and the methodology to teach language's skills and components taking into account some inevitable aspects of th eteaching process itsel such as classroom management, lesson planning, materials design, etc.
The first step was to determine the language teaching methods that best adjust to the objectives and activities of the class as well as the teacher's personality (which is me, of course hehe) Something I learnt from studying the different language teaching methods was that the teacher must not stick to a single method as studentsare complex individuals with different learning styles and that not every class or activity adjust to one only method.
later, I selected two sections from a textbook to use as a material for my class; I must admit I skipped the material design step.
Then, I had to think on how to evaluate language's skills and components presented on my material (listening, speaking, writing, vocabulary and grammar). In order to do this, I made questions to introduce new vocabulary and encouraged students to add new terms. Also, vocabulary and grammar were evaluated with a football game in which students had to match chores and activities with the appropiate collocation and asked each other questions to win the game. The audio was played (or roead as was my case) three times and th estudents were asked to identify, before listening, the activities mentioned in the audio. To promote speaking, discussion about the students¡ favorite activities was startedfrom that point on the students asked each other questions regarding their favorite activities and what they did recently (yesterday, this morning...). Furthermore, to practice writing the students created and completed Yes/No and Wh-questions using simple past and its possible answers.They also match a list of activities andchores with the appropiate collocation which they later used in the football game mentioned above.
To conclude, the micro-class was an enriching experience for me as I had the opportunity to apply what I learnt throughout the whole semester. I am now conscious of all the elements that affect and take place in the process of second language learning. I am definetely better prepared to teach a class and assess the elements I just mentioned. I believe I have changed noticebly; my presentations are very different from those I did at the beginning of the term or last year; I have gained confidence while teaching due to all the practice and I fell that I can now react quickly and solve unspected problems. I have grown up as a teacher, planner and evaluator this term, and it has been in part due to this course.
Thank you very much Professor Nahir.