MICRO TEACH - FINALLY!!!!

Finally after a long time I was able to complete my Micro teaching. I can honestly say, and I am sure that my peers will vouch for me, that I was incredibly nervous leading up to the lesson. I wasn’t nervous about teaching the children, but instead at the quality of my teaching abilities and my lesson plan (which the first one I’ve ever written was, but certainly not the last). Luckily I have a great group of peers with me at St. Vincent de Paul, and a great mentor who were quick to calm me down and assure me that I would do fine. I decided to teach a math lesson during my micro teaching mainly because it is a subject I will be teaching during my block, and I love when students use hands on materials such as manipulatives in their learning, it only enhances the quality of their learning. After viewing my video (which was quite an experience in itself) I have come to realize that the lesson did not quite go as badly as I thought that it did. I did realize that the nerves calmed right down once the lesson began, and I was able to block out some of the extra bodies in the room and focus only on the students and the task at hand. Some things that I know I must work on is of course my language skills-pronunciation of words, my speaking volume (which I am usually told is quite loud), and the use of certain words like Can you tell me…and of course the word ‘ok’. As much as I reminded myself before the lesson not to use this type of questioning it came out in my video, especially my “okay’s”. I did however catch myself once when I almost said “you guys”, I quickly stopped myself because I remembered my mini-micro where I let it slip out a few times.
Taking all the comments I received into consideration, I will definitely try to bring some of the positive aspects of my teaching into my block, while continuing to work on the part of my teaching that could be improved. As a side my micro teaching day fell on Halloween, after my lesson I was able to join my fellow 'pink ladies' and enjoy the days festivities!!