Wednesday 19^thDecember, 2018.

This was our first (and dreaded) deadline day for assignment hand-ins at university, despite our course starting almost 3 months before.

For this, we had to plan, execute and evaluate a MicroTeach (MT), and also do an observation of an experienced tutorand reflect on what we learnt, pinpointing some of the teaching methods used.

As far as assignments go, I actually really enjoyed these two! Planning the MicroTeach was something different and a bit of a challenge, but one that I would happily do again. It was nice we were given so much freedom of what to teach within the 30 minute class. We were literally told we could do whatever we wanted, as long as we kept it respectful and achievable within the time limit, and without needing a crazy amount of resources! I think this is why so many people struggled with deciding on a topic. With so much freedom, where do you start? Similar to why lots are finding it difficult to write these reflective blogs. In education we’re told from so young exactly what to do, what to write, and how to do it. Yet now, here we are, being given almost unlimited possibilities and freedom to teach whatever we want (for the MT), and blog however we find easiest about our education or teaching. It’s a difficult thing to allow yourself to be free in education when we’ve been given so many constraints in the past.

Choosing my topic for the MT was quite easy; I wanted to teach a skill that not many others have. A lot were going to teach an introduction to a different language, but I wanted to make mine a little different, focusing on counting from 1-10 in Mandarin, including the hand gestures. I love coming up with ideas and activities to Continue reading →