Post-Microteaching Reflections

Its over. Micro-teaching is over. I survived..

It wasn't that bad, thank you class for giving me a relatively ok time. You all have been really kind and I'’m utterly thankful haha.

Just a couple of thoughts:

1) Content content. Whoever would have thought that pressure release is not really the 3rd physical weathering form to teach, but rather, is a precursor to other weathering processes? My teachers never taught me that! The danger of easy classifications in our typical geography textbooks, another reason why we should be non-reliant on conventional textbooks and really be using our brains more in deciding what and how to teach out students. Also, I must admit that I tried to 'smoke' the class by saying that the topic 'Rock types' is after the weathering lessons, in a feeble attempt to avoid awkward questions that will expose me inadequate knowledge of the rock types of even the landforms I showed on my slides. Better brush up on content knowledge, Mr Pang!

2) Relatedly, Dr Chang's exhortation to us to be thinking more deeply the way we wanna 'lead' the lesson makes tons of sense. If 'Rocks' really were to be a follow up to this lesson (which I think doesn't make sense – it should come BEFORE), the way my lesson is designed ought to reflect and point/hint to my students that fact. I tried to emphasize on 'Climate' as a controlling factor – but obviously failed badly cos I neglected to follow the factsheet I passed around class for students to fill in. There was some big idea, some structure I wanted to follow, to get the students DESCRIBING, and then EXPLAINING, and then INFERRING the climate associated with each weathering process and form. But obviously, without the factsheet to guide me, I made a lil mess out of it.

3) I'm glad a few of you reflected that you like the final activity, the one with the reshuffled pictures. It seems quite a simple task, and may be too 'scaffolded' for certain students of higher levels in certain schools, but I see value in helping students visualize and grasp the time-sequenced series of stages that is involved in processes like weathering. I had a torrid time finding the diagrams to make up the green, yellow and blue sets, and had to resort to using Paint to crop and alter other diagrams I have. It was terrible cutting out all the small lil multiple diagrams, and putting on double sided tape is a torture – I ended up sleeping at 4am for this silly exercise. Isaac suggested an alternative in simply labeling with numbers these pictures on a sheet and asking students to reshuffle the numbers in the right sequence. Possible.. not so hands on, but much less tiring for overworked teachers as well.

4) All in all, it was a good experience conducting an actual lesson. Makes me realize the importance of time discipline, and how things are really out of your control at times, depending on the questions that may be thrown up. Can’t wait for more actual experience!!