Day 11

Topics: Micro Teaching - Life Skills - Presentations

The day started with a mix feeling of excitement as well as anxiousness. As our trainer has told that few externals will also be present during our presentations to assess and judge the presentation style. Trainer already shared assessment criterion of presentations. As creating presentations is my favorite task and I am using PowerPoint for years now both at school and in my social circle sessions. I was confident yesterday while discussing with my group members that once content and its flow is finalized, we can easily create a master piece presentation. Late hour discussion and the collaborative work actually enabled us to create as such. Looking at our tiring efforts, I was deeply satisfied atleast with the slides and its content. Before start of session, we created a meeting link and rehearse our presentations. It was not being known till the start of session that we were actually doing a sort of MICRO TEACHIING at that time. Anxiety remains, as our trainer, after taking 2-3 reflections, started the topic of Micro Teaching. The concept seemed to be new but very effective to me and as for practice and correction, we sometimes perform rehearsals, he explained a professional way of implementing micro teaching which is, practicing teaching skills at a smaller scale before a small audience and one of the expert who can reflect and give feedback on teaching styles. The areas which are to be assessed by the mentor, was explained, some of which are classroom management, board management, communication skills, way of probing question, method of illustrations etc. The feedback obtained is used to improve the weakness before coming in the classroom. After summing up the topic, trainer asked to present the lesson plan. Group 1 presented their fantastic work. The composition and clarity of plan was obvious; it helps me to correct few mistakes in our lesson. The trainer then showed a video of child abuse, a topic which is still considered as a taboo in our society. The growing incidents of child abuse has really raises the need of awareness in society and how we can empower our children about the issue. Another short play of developing skills to handle disastrous situations like floods was being showed. The topic to which we then moved was Life Skill based learning. Trainer, while showing his visual slides, explained various situations and scenarios for which we have to teach our students along with the syllabus and content. Last session was the long awaited one. Presentation competition! As always I wanted to present first and asked to do so but trainer decided to allow room number-wise. First group had the competency of Computer Literacy and Mr Furrukh was presenting on their behalf. His confident delivery style, visual slides and  content was very captivating. He could not end in allotted time and so in the end slides have to be moved quickly. While observing Furrukhs slides, our group got a little panicky as we have not prepared the lesson for 9th graders. Instead we have focused on the audience listening and so my main discussion was kept around the curriculum competency, standard, benchmark and SLOs of the chapter. After listening to all other presentations, we are still wondering whether we had understood and explained correctly or other groups who were teaching the topics of chapter.  All our group members were looking towards the next presentation, which was ours. With best wish messages and lots of prayers, I started the presentation. Presentations are never a tough task for me. After covering the curriculum and text books SLOs and its scope, I handed over to Afsheen who is an expert in exploring and using innovative tools. As always her style put everyone in silent mode. I finished the presentation and ask our trainers permission to demonstrate a nearpod quiz. We have discussed nearpod as latest and interactive presentation tool. This was the most amazing part of whole session. 4-5 members joined us through the link including me while Afsheen was controlling the game. This ending part gives life to whole presentation. After our presentation, Nadia and Danish from Group 3 presented their work. One thing common in everyone's presentation, was the delivery of subject matter from text book which causes a boring effect on participants. After all the presentations, a poll was generated where our group got highest points. Result from our trainer was also shared within an hour which declared our group as winner. I have nothing but to thank Allah to give respect and honor before others. Both of us never intended to compete or got winning meddle. I believed in giving my best and tried to do so in all tasks which were assigned during the training sessions.