Listen to the
Mountain: Part I
[Standard IX- Unit
III]
“The finest poetry was the first experience” – Ralph Waldo
Emerson
The pandemic of Covid-19 brought the dawn of
“the new normal” culture of online learning. I had the opportunity to enjoy the
practice teaching for the first time on 28.09.2020. The online practice
teaching was held via Google meet and my classmates “pretended” to be my
students. It was all like “microteaching” once again, but with some difference!
I enjoyed the experience tremendously. It was fun to begin with. I never knew I
missed teaching this much till then. Nothing can replace a real classroom but
we can work with what we got. After all that is called survival when we
overcome the challenges that life throws at you.
The day before:
I have prepared a detailed unit plan of the
unit assigned to me from Standard IX- Unit III- Care for the Morrow. I divided the lesson Listen to the Mountain into 10 parts and
then prepared lesson plan and teaching aids needed for part I. In part I I
decided to include set induction- to the unit, to the genre-pay, to the chapter
and to the writer.
On the day of the class:
Even though I had to encounter network issues I
could start the class on time. I was able to follow the lesson plan. It taught
me the importance of having a well-crafted plan before teaching a class. Then
only the execution will be proper. I tried to be as “natural” as possible and
made it a point to make my class feel different from other online classes. The
students very well cooperated and that is the main reason I was able to make
the class interactive and interesting. After reminiscence I was able to list
out some of the highlights of the class as well as several drawbacks. I should
redeem the mistakes I made while taking the part I. Let's go through my own
thoughts, after all a teacher should be able to do proper self-evaluation!
PowerPoint Presentation
Highlights
ü New Strategies: I don't know how far one can call them new,
but I was trying to adapt methods that we usually follow in a traditional
classroom.
Eg:- taking attendance, making the students do
activities and later posting them in the what’s app group, giving instructions,
using improvised teaching aids like the picture depicting “dream world”
ü Proper Sequencing of the Content: I made it a point to properly link the
content to be taught. With the help of the lesson plan I was able to do that
from the beginning till the end.
ü Activity: To suit the purpose of online platform I modified the
activities given in the text. I felt doing the textual activities as such good
hamper the effectiveness of the lesson.
ü Time Management: Since our supervisory teacher stressed the importance
of managing time I tried to stick to the schedule. I was able to do that and even
had five minutes to spare for clearing the doubts of the learners.
ü Role of the “Learner”: Even though there were no real students there and the classmates were pretending I was able to make the class interactive and ensure that the students actively be a part of it.
