Micro Teaching - Grade 5 (2)

Microteaching - Grade 5 

As with the previous one, the next set of microteaching activities was done in a single grade 5 class, this took a span of 2x45min lessons in which the students were reading on the topic of volcanos. I have attached my lesson plan for this class and overall, everything went pretty smoothly as we were able to get through the whole lesson plan without many issues. This was likely because it was a grade 5 class with about 16 students and I was a new teacher for them, making them more focused and non-disruptive.

The first activity with which I started the lesson was a YouTube video (https://youtu.be/lAmqsMQG3RM?feature=shared) about volcanos. It was a simple and easy-to-understand introduction to open up the lesson. After the lesson, my tutor mentioned that she liked that I used the video, stating that she had used that exact video before. In my previous job in Korea, we often had CLIL lessons (about 10 per semester) which we as the teachers had to plan, share and teach throughout the semester, so as the topic of volcanos had been taught before, I was familiar with good resources and tools for it (this video included). After the video, to reflect on it, I drew an outline of a volcano on the board and asked the students to label it. For this the students who knew the answer raised their hands. This activity co-incited with their coursebook activity so, using the board, they were able to label their own volcanos (although they looked slightly different and had to work out what was what). the keywords in this were: lava, slope, magma, smoke and ash, rim, and lava stream. The vocabulary of “rim” was difficult for them so I explained using a drawing.

The next activity was a lead-up to the next, main one, which was reading. In this, I wrote out the title of the reading on the board and asked for guesses and suggestions from the students on what they thought the reading was going to be about, I got a lot of different interesting answers and I made sure to acknowledge all of them as there was no wrong answers. From this, we moved on to the reading stage.

As the text (shown below) had multiple paragraphs, I asked students to read a few sentences out loud by using a name picker. While this worked overall in this class, in hindsight, I wonder if it was the right way to go about it. While the concept-checking activities that followed seemed to support that they understood the reading, maybe silent reading would have been a better way to go about it. Nevertheless, we got through the reading and before moving on to the next activity, I asked the students if their predictions based on the title were correct, some were, and some weren’t, but it worked well as a way to round up the reading. Following this we moved on to the next activity.

In this activity, I asked the students to summarise the three paragraphs into very short summaries. I gave them the sentence starters (writing them on the whiteboard) and asked them to finish the sentences based on their reading.

”In the first part, ________.”

”Then, ________.”

”Next, __________.”

I gave the students plenty of time to write the answers, and while they did, I floated around the classroom, checking to see who was working and who needed help. Overall, the activity and reading were successful as most, if not all, of the students were able to concisely summarise the text. It went really well in my opinion and it boosted my confidence for the next activities. after this, we had time to do activities 5 and 6 before the lesson finished.

After their break, I had another lesson with the same class so I wanted to build up on what we had done in the previous lesson. The next topic in the course book was about Smokejumpers. Before reading the text, I asked the students to quietly read over sentences A-E under the first activity so that they had an idea of what the text was going to be about and to give them something to think about when reading the text. I also wrote the word “smokejumper” on the board and asked for ideas of what a smokejumper was, emphasising the two words separately as well as a single word together. 

This time, I set a 3-minute timer for the students to read silently and to be able to figure out where the new sentences were added, after the timer finished, I asked different students to read the text out loud to check if their answers were correct as well as practicing reading. 

While they were reading, I drew out a table on the board, giving enough space for 3 columns of SmokeJumper, Volcano Explorer and both. For the next activity, I asked for suggestions about what similarities and differences are between the two roles. I was given a lot of good ideas. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of what they had brainstormed. After we had a concise list written out, I paired up the students using a name picker (in order to mix up the partners to encourage them to talk) and gave out roles, person A was a smoke jumper and person B was a volcano explorer and they had to roleplay together, explaining their own roles to their partner. After. A few minutes the speaker changed, and after a while longer they would talk about the similarities. 

As we still had some time left in the lesson, I asked the students to write about the job of their partner, what they had told them and how they were similar/different to their role. This went on to the end of the lesson during which I monitored and helped wherever necessary.

The main reflection of this lesson that I noticed was how difficult it is to engage everyone in the activities, when it came to open activities which I asked the whole class, it was always the same students who answered the questions and it was hard to get the quieter ones to speak up. This is definitely something I will be paying more attention to in future lessons.