MICRO TEACHING SKILLS - INTEGRATION OF SKILLS

Having armed the teacher trainees with a battery of teaching sub skills, the next stage is the integration of those sub skills into the major skill. A deliberate programme of integration of sub skill is called Link Practice or Link Lessons. There are many methods for link practice. One of the methods is that after practicing three sub skills separately, the trainee may combine all the three sub skills in a lesson of ten minutes. He then practices another three sub skills separately and links them. He then combines all the six sub skills in a single lesson of 15 minutes. And so on till all the sub skills are combined in a macro lesson of 40 minutes and teaching a full class.

Link practice or integration of skills can be done in two ways;

1.     Integration in parts

                                    3 or 4 teaching skills are integrated and transferred them into a lesson of 15-20 minutes duration. And again 3 or 4 skills are integrated and are transferred all the skills to one lesson.

2.     Integration as a whole

Student teacher integrates all the individual teaching skills by taking them as a whole and prepares a macro lesson then transferred them into a real teaching situation

SET INDUCTION

The lesson begins with a series of hands-on experiments – “make your own magic” – to pique the students’ interest in the subject. The material designated “students’ material” above is distributed to each pair of students, together with “Worksheet 1” which looks like a quiz, but is mostly blank except for spaces to fill in their names and class. The (fake) “quiz” element would help to capture the students’ attention. The students are told to inflate the long balloons and try two experiments: run the balloon over their partners’ hair and note that it can make his/her hair stand. Next, try to stick the rubbed side of the balloon against the wall it will seemingly defying the laws of gravity.

The students will then be told to tear up “Worksheet 1” into small pieces of paper, a guideline for the size of which will be shown on the OHP. This will provide kinaesthetic learners a chance for hands-on activity and greater involvement in their own learning. Students will place their small pieces of paper on the table and rub their provided plastic rulers with the cloth. By bringing the ruler near the pieces of paper, students would observe that the ruler “magically” attracts the pieces of paper to itself, seemingly defying gravity.

At this point, ask the students what kind of forces they know about other than gravity, and introduce the term “static electricity” to begin the topic. Further hooks into the topic can be provided with some real-life static electricity examples, such as thunderstorm clouds and anecdotes of static shock (though the latter is not as applicable in this country).

LESSON CLOSURE

Students will be asked to recall what they have learnt during the lesson before being presented with a brief summary, serving to address the content and process learning outcomes of the lesson. They will be told to complete their worksheets. These worksheets will serve as indicators of successful learning, hence one of the worksheets is a simple concept map of what they have learnt in this class that can be completed and discussed in class to clarify any alternative conceptions.

·         As the topic is only to be concluded in the next lesson (this lesson plan has not covered electric fields and the hazards of static electricity), the students will be shown a picture of a petrol-transporting truck, and will be asked to think about why such trucks usually have a metal chain dangling from the metal body of the truck to the ground.