Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector: Session 7
This week was the first week of microteaches . Each learner teaches a 30 minute session and it is assessed by the tutor and 3 members of the class. There are 19 people in the class so we were split into two smaller groups for this. Four learners in each group gave their microteaches last night, the same number will do it next week and the final three learners will give their microteaches to the whole class in a couple of weeks time. I'm sure you didn't really want to know about the maths, but I tried to explain it to John last night and managed to confuse him completely....
Anyway, the first session last night was on risk and fire safety. I found it very interesting and the kind of thing that could probably save your life one day, but there was so much of it, that I thought my brain might explode. It transpired that the learner regularly gave 3 hour training sessions on this and he'd condensed it all into 30 minutes. Phew! No wonder he was speaking really fast!!
The second session was on presentation skills. The learner works for Brighton Sea Life Centre training the guides there. He started by giving us a 'bad' presentation and got us to tell him what was wrong with it. Then he gave us a 'good 'presentation and we had to pick out the good bits. After that, we had to .split into pairs and having been given information about various fish, had to take turns in presenting this information in a good way to our partners. I now know a bit about a kind of vampire fish. :) I thought that this learner was pretty good, but unfortunately his session was only 20 minutes.
The last two learners both gave music related microteaches. The first one gave his on tags (I think they're called-the little numbers before the notes on sheet music). Music has always been one of the subjects that scares me most-I'm completely hopeless at it because of my brain damage, so I may have come to this one with something of a mental block, but I did get a bit confused. I felt a tiny bit intimidated when I had to clap something out in front of the rest of the class, but I think I did sort of OK.
The last microteach focussed on writing lyrics and I found this much easier. Although I'm not a lyricist or a poet, I have studied a fair bit of poetry over the years (I knew my half a degree in English Literature would come in useful for something. :)) Anyway, this learner did most of the talking and got us into groups at the end to write our own lyrics. He chose my groups lyrics to put to music. We used the 'cut up' way to write our lyrics (just choose random words from newspapers, magazines etc). Apparently we have something in common with David Bowie . That goes quite some way in explaining the lyrics to Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes to Ashes then....:D
Anyway, it's my turn next week! I will be looking at a few developments in 19th century medicine-anaesthetic, antiseptic and x-ray. Did you know that x-rays were discovered in the 19th century? I'm really nervous about my microteach.
Anyway, the first session last night was on risk and fire safety. I found it very interesting and the kind of thing that could probably save your life one day, but there was so much of it, that I thought my brain might explode. It transpired that the learner regularly gave 3 hour training sessions on this and he'd condensed it all into 30 minutes. Phew! No wonder he was speaking really fast!!
The second session was on presentation skills. The learner works for Brighton Sea Life Centre training the guides there. He started by giving us a 'bad' presentation and got us to tell him what was wrong with it. Then he gave us a 'good 'presentation and we had to pick out the good bits. After that, we had to .split into pairs and having been given information about various fish, had to take turns in presenting this information in a good way to our partners. I now know a bit about a kind of vampire fish. :) I thought that this learner was pretty good, but unfortunately his session was only 20 minutes.
The last two learners both gave music related microteaches. The first one gave his on tags (I think they're called-the little numbers before the notes on sheet music). Music has always been one of the subjects that scares me most-I'm completely hopeless at it because of my brain damage, so I may have come to this one with something of a mental block, but I did get a bit confused. I felt a tiny bit intimidated when I had to clap something out in front of the rest of the class, but I think I did sort of OK.
The last microteach focussed on writing lyrics and I found this much easier. Although I'm not a lyricist or a poet, I have studied a fair bit of poetry over the years (I knew my half a degree in English Literature would come in useful for something. :)) Anyway, this learner did most of the talking and got us into groups at the end to write our own lyrics. He chose my groups lyrics to put to music. We used the 'cut up' way to write our lyrics (just choose random words from newspapers, magazines etc). Apparently we have something in common with David Bowie . That goes quite some way in explaining the lyrics to Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes to Ashes then....:D
Anyway, it's my turn next week! I will be looking at a few developments in 19th century medicine-anaesthetic, antiseptic and x-ray. Did you know that x-rays were discovered in the 19th century? I'm really nervous about my microteach.