Micro teaching adventure!

Before we go out into the world of student teaching, one assignment for #psuaged16 is to micro teach. Essentially we spend three days teaching a mini unit to a class not at our cooperating center. This gives us the practice of teaching more than one day, but at a place we don't have to return to in case it goes badly.

Luckily, my micro teaching experience did not go badly, and it makes me sad that I will not be returning. Myself and 2 of my cohort members had our micro teaching experience at Williamsburg and I taught the Animal Science class of about 10 students for 3 days in a row. I taught a mini unit on anatomy where they learned basic terminology/planes of the body, types of bones and joints, and some basic bones in a horse skeleton. I planned my 42 minute lessons to contain content, but to drive home their new knowledge with activities. Day 1 consisted of worksheets and then dissecting gummy bears to show the terminology. Day 2 consisted of building types of bones out of Play-doh and sharing with their classmates. The last day they guessed the parts of a horse skeleton, received a brief PowerPoint on the bones in the body, created a sentence using the first letter of bones to remember the order, then relabeled the skeleton as a class.

It was a pretty new experience to me, since before this experience I've only taught workshops and other experiences where I only teach the students once and never see them again. My biggest struggle with this experience was trying to teach everything I wanted in only 42 minutes. It seems like a decent amount of time, but when I actually tried to teach I ran out of time the first 2 days. With only 10 students, I had ample time to get to know all of their names and some of their interests which made the experience very rewarding.

On the last day the students filled out a learner satisfaction form so I could gauge what students thought about my teaching. I encouraged them to be honest and had them tell me what constructive criticism was. I wanted to introduce it that way because I told students if they didn't like something about the lessons then I expected them to tell me how it could be better. I guess this conversation didn't matter though because I got positive feedback from all ten students. The only question that I would consider it negative feedback were about my timing. Out of 10, 2 students did circle an answer saying at times the class went a little fast. I could definitely see where they were coming from since I ended up rushing through some material for days 1 & 2 when I realized how quickly class time was passing.

This experience was very helpful. First, I can better gauge my lessons for student teaching since Wellsboro class periods are also 42 minutes long (or should I say short!). I had experience with preparing lessons from day-to-day to use which will help while student teaching. This micro teaching is designed to be a super mini taste of student teaching. It really helps you get the idea of what to expect in student teaching. I am more excited than ever to continue my journey by jumping into Wellsboro for student teaching. Thanks Williamsburg for allowing me to micro teach! In the words of a Williamsburg student, "It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun!"