MICRO TEACHING

Micro teaching was developed in the early and mid-1960’s by Dwight Allen and his colleagues at the Stanford teacher education programme. The Stanford model emphasized a teach, review and reflect, re-teach approach, using actual school students as authentic audiences.

A micro lesson is an opportunity to present a samples snapshot‖ of what/how you teach and to get some feedback from colleagues about how it was received. The microteaching cycle starts with planning. In order to reduce the complexities involved in teaching, the student teacher is asked to plan a micro lesson‖ i.e a short lesson for 5-10 minutes which he will teach in front of a micro class‖ i.e necessary.

DEFINITIONS OF MICRO- TEACHING

Micro-teaching has been defined in a number of ways. Some selected definitions are given below:

ü Micro-teaching is a scaled down teaching encounter in class size and class time.

ü Micro-teaching is defined as a system of controlled practice that makes it possible to concentrate on specified teaching behaviour and to practices teaching under controlled conditions.

ü Micro-teaching is a teacher education technique which allows teachers to apply clearly defined teaching skills to carefully prepared lessons in a planned series of 5-10 minutes encounter with a small group of real students, often with an opportunity to observe the result on video-tape.

ü Micro-teaching is a scaled down teaching encounter in which a teacher teaches a small unit to a group of five pupils for a small period of 5-20 minutes. Such a situation offers a helpful setting for an experienced or inexperienced teacher to acquire new teaching skills and to refine old ones.

THE BEGGININGS OF MICRO- TEACHING

Stanford University developed Microteaching in 1963 as a part of an experimental program. It was viewed as feasible in making student- teachers aware of the realities of teaching. It also served as a measurable tool in identifying teaching skills prior to actual teaching.

PURPOSES OF MICRO- TEACHING

There are two purposes of Microteaching: (a) for student- teachers to develop teaching skills under controlled conditions without risking the learning of the pupils, and (b) for experienced teachers to examine and refine their techniques.

PHASES OF MICRO- TEACHING:

According to J.C. Clift and others, micro-teaching procedure has three phases:

1. Knowledge acquisition phase: In this phase, the student teacher attempt to acquire knowledge about the skill- it’s rational, its role in class room and its component behaviours. For this he reads relevant literature. He also observes demonstration lesson-mode of presentation of the skill. The student teacher gets theoretical as well as practical knowledge of the skill.

2. Skill acquisition phase: On the basis of the model presented to the student-teacher, he prepares a micro-lesson and practices the skill and carries out the micro-teaching cycle. There are two components of this phase:

(a)  feedback

(b)  micro-teaching settings.

Micro-teaching settings include conditions like the size of the micro-class, duration of the micro-lesson, supervisor, types of students etc.

3. Transfer phase: Here the student-teacher integrates the different skills. In place of artificial situation, he teaches in the real classroom and tries to integrate all the skills.

Micro teaching was developed in the early and mid-1960’s by Dwight Allen and his colleagues at the Stanford teacher education programme. The Stanford model emphasized a teach, review and reflect, re-teach approach, using actual school students as authentic audiences.

Micro teaching Cycle

The above diagram gives us an outlook about Micro teaching process. The cycle continues up to the extent when a trainee will able to master a specific skill.

PLAN

This involves the selection of the topic and related content of such a nature in which the use of components of the skill under practice may be made easily and conveniently. The topic is analysed into different activities of the teacher and the pupils. The activities are planned in such a logical sequence where maximum applications of the components of a skill are possible.

TEACH

 This involves the attempts of the teacher trainee to use the components of the skill in suitable situations coming up in the process of teaching-learning as per his/her planning of activities. If the situation is different and not as visualised in the planning of the activities, the teacher should modify his/her behaviour as per the demand of the situation in the class. He should have the courage and confidence to handle the situation arising in the class effectively.

FEEDBACK

This term refers to giving information to the teacher trainee about his performance. The information includes the points of strength as well as weakness relating to his/her performance. This helps the teacher trainee to improve upon his/her performance in the desired direction.

RE-PLAN 

The teacher trainee replans his lesson incorporating the points of strength and removing the points not skillfully handled during teaching in the previous attempt either on the same topic or on another topic suiting to the teacher trainee for improvement.

RE-TEACH

This involves teaching to the same group of pupils if the topic is changed or to a different group of pupils if the topic is the same. This is done to remove boredom or monotony of the pupil. The teacher trainee teaches the class with renewed courage and confidence to perform better than the previous attempt.

RE-FEEDBACK

This is the most important component of Micro-teaching for behaviour modifiction of teacher trainee in the desired direction in each and every skill practice.

In the Micro-teaching cycle, the same steps are involved. Firstly the teacher trainee knows the behaviours (components of skill) to be practiced. Secondly he practices such a behaviour during teach session. Thirdly he gets the feedback on the basis of the observation of his performance made by the supervisor. Finally the teacher trainee improves upon his/her behaviour (performance) as desired.

ADVANTAGES OF MICROTEACHING

Microteaching has several advantages. It focuses on sharpening and developing specific teaching skills and eliminating errors. It enables understanding of behaviours important in classroom teacher. It enables projection of model instructional skills. It provides expert supervision and a constructive feedback and above all if provides for repeated practice without adverse consequences to the teacher or his students.

In our daily life, the busy schedule tends us to invite more problems and we get caught in situation by one way or another. If these problems are not attended properly; these tend to tease you on every step. They say if you are not a part of solution than you are a part of problem. However the significance lies in the solution of the problem, no matter what procedure one adopts to acquire the solution.

PREPARATION OF MICRO TEACHING

To prepare a short lesson for a small group of learner. Your lesson can be excerpted from the beginning, middle or end of one course lesson and you will be able to explain this in setting up your lesson and as part of your application or instruction form.