What are micro teaching skills?
Micro teaching is a practice method of teaching that involves the observation and evaluation of pupil teacher’s performance in a simulated teaching environment. The goal of micro teaching is to help teachers become more effective and confident in their teaching practices.
There are various micro teaching skills. But five most useful micro-teaching skills are:
1. Skill of Blackboard writing
2. Skill of Reinforcement
3. Skill of Probing questioning
4. Skill of Explanation
5. Skill of Stimulus variation
Skill of Blackboard writing
It helps to organize the material effectively. It makes the content visually appealing. It helps to make students attentive during the lecture.
Components of blackboard writing skill are:
a. Legibility of handwriting:- it involves proper readability and the appropriate size of letters. There should be a proper space between the lines.
b. Neatness in blackboard work:- It involves the cleanliness of the blackboard work. Lines should be written in proper order.
c. Appropriateness of written work:- Adequate and quality content should be written on the board. Points written on the blackboard should have a proper association with them.
d. Illustrations and diagrams:- Illustrations and diagrams help to make the content interesting to students. These should be related to the material.
e. To speak while writing:- It is the most important component of blackboard writing. One cannot master blackboard writing skill without practising this component. A teacher should speak every word while writing on the blackboard.
f. Accuracy:- Content written on the blackboard should be error free and up to date.
Skill of Reinforcement
It is used to encourage desired behaviour and skill. Reinforcement can be positive or negative. But usually, in teaching practice, we only use positive reinforcement. The teacher should use reinforcement in a systematic and appropriate manner.
Components of skill of reinforcement are:
a. Positive verbal reinforcement:- If the answer given by the student is correct, a teacher may use positive verbal reinforcement. Some examples of positive verbal reinforcement are:
● Very good.
● Excellent.
● Correct.
b. Positive non-verbal reinforcement:- Some examples of positive non-verbal reinforcement are:
● Smile.
● Positive gestures such as giving a thumbs-up.
● Use facial expressions.
c. Use of extra verbal cues:- Some examples of extra verbal cues are:
● Hmmm
● Aha
Some other components are:
d. Writing pupil’s response on blackboard
e. Repeating and rephrasing pupil response
Skill of Probing questioning
Teachers ask such questions to students which helps in developing their critical thinking and reasoning power.
Components of skill of probing questions are:
a. Prompting:- The teacher asks such questions which enable student to give response to that questions.
b. Re-directing:- It is used after promoting. When the answer given by the student is incorrect then direct the question to other students.
c. Re-focusing:- It is used to relate the given answer with the previously covered topics.
d. Seeking further information:- The teacher asks such questions which aim to extract extra information from already given answer.
e. Increasing critical awareness:- The teachers ask ‘why’ and ‘How’ type of questions to increase the critical awareness of students.
Skill of Explanation
It is used to provide a clear understanding of the subject matter. The objective is to make the learning experience more accessible and enjoyable for all students.
a. Introductory statement:- To make the students familiar with the concept, a teacher first introduces the topic in a few statements.
b. Use explaining links:- This component is used to make the links between different statements. For example: therefore, as, In order to, etc,
c. Use of visual techniques:- Teacher uses graphs, charts, maps, etc to explain the topic to students.
d. Technical words defined:- Teacher should define the technical word in a clear and precise manner. Examples of some technical words are: respiration, mutation, photosynthesis, eclipse, etc.
e Covering essential points:- Teacher should cover all the essential points related to the topic.
f. Testing pupil understanding:- The teacher should ask some questions from the students during the lecture to check whether they are understanding the topic or not.
g. Concluding statement:- Teacher wraps up the session with the concluding statement.
Skill of Stimulus variation
It is used to break the monotony of the classroom so that the class environment can become more engaging and interesting.
Components of skill of stimulus variation are:
a. Movement:- Purposeful movements of the teacher in the class helps in better interaction with students.
b. Gesture:- Teacher should use different gestures during teaching. These gestures can be moving of head, moving of head, etc.
c. Change in speech pattern:- Teachers should keep changing their speech pattern during the lecture. It helps to make the class more attentive and focused.
d. Focusing:- It is used to draw the attention of the students to a particular point.
e. Change in interaction:- There should be variations in the interaction between the students and teacher during the teaching-learning process. It includes physical involvement of students, discussions, etc.
f. Pausing:- Teacher should take pauses to grab the attention of students.
g. Oral visual switching:- There should be proper oral visual switching during the lecture. It should be according to the need and demand of the topic.
Read also:
Concept, Nature and Importance of Curriculum
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