Background:
I chose to base my microteaching on historical wig-making tools that we still use today. I am not a teaching technician and only have contact with students in 121s and supervised studios, so I did not have any lesson plans that I could have adapted, I need to create a whole new micro lesson. I don’t usually teach people who have no background knowledge either, so it was difficult to create something that would work more broadly than how I am used to interacting with students.
Lesson Plan:
The lesson was structured around three historical wig-making objects, with the general plan being to start with asking the students to draw or write down what they thought the singular image of each object was used for. They were given 30 seconds for each of three images. After the three intervals was an allocated 3-5 minutes of responses from the students. Following this was roughly 15 minutes of the history and background of each object. As I was unsure if I would have a full 15 minutes of information I also built in the possibility of a discussion at the end of the lesson.
How it went:
I do not feel that my microteach session went particularly well, mostly due to the fact that I have absolutely no experience with this form of teaching, with it being online and it being for absolute beginners. I only had two “students” due to unforeseen circumstances, so my timing was a little thrown off, but thankfully as I had built in an optional discussion at the end, I did manage to fill the 20 minutes of teaching time. The two participants were more than happy to engage with the sketching which helped my flow with connecting from the “guessing” portion to the learning portion.
Feedback/Reflection:
As I said previously, I did not feel too positive about my microteach session after I completed it. I don’t feel like that’s a bad thing though and I don’t regret it, I just have to acknowledge that it was very outside my comfort zone and was something I’d never done before. The feedback I received was mostly positive and largely centered around how enjoyable the participants found the subject matter. I’m glad I decided to focus on a topic that was still quite specific as I did feel pressure to generalise it and make it easier to digest as I know that 20 minutes can be a very short period to explain something advanced. I also received some very valid feedback from one participant that the beginning of my exercise wasn’t as inclusive as it should have been. I didn’t preface the lesson with an explanation of the structure, and I didn’t warn people that I would be asking them to draw or guess blindly. I can understand that this can be exclusionary to students who might need to know the structure beforehand and may be caused anxiety by not being told that they will be guessing. I can see now that asking people to guess and then share with others requires trust. I think I am so used to teaching students who I already know that I did not consider this to be necessary but will definitely include this in future lesson plans.