Bobby Maffei

TEAC 451-R

Microteaching #3 Reflection

The third microteaching activity that I completed was a twenty minute

culture lesson that I created for intermediate to advanced Spanish students. For my

culture lesson, I decided to teach my students about soccer in Spain. I felt like this

would be a great idea for my culture lesson because I knew that I would be able to

effectively teach this subject within the twenty minute limit. The objective for my

lesson was, “By the end of the lesson, students will be able to describe soccer as a

cultural aspect of Spain”. In order to demonstrate mastery of the lesson, students

were assigned a three paragraph essay to describe various aspects of soccer in

Spain.

After reviewing my third microteaching activity on video, I am fairly pleased

with my performance. I feel like there were a lot of positives that I could take away

from my lesson. One of the aspects that I am proud of, yet again, is my stage

presence. In every single one of my peer reviews, the other students commented on

how I was very enthusiastic and seemed to have fun while teaching the lesson. To

me, this is very important because I feel that an enthusiastic teacher can have a

greater affect on the students in the classroom. By being enthusiastic and have a

good stage presence, students are more willing to become engaged in the lesson.
This can be a great tool for motivating students. In addition to helping students

become more engaged in the lesson, an enthusiastic teacher can also lower the

affective filter in the classroom. This is a crucial aspect of education that teachers

should be aware of since a low affective filter promotes a high level of learning due

to the lack of pressure amongst the students.

In addition to my stage presence, I also received a lot of positive feedback

about using TPR in order to review important vocabulary. The other students

commented and said that this was a very fun part of my culture lesson. I felt that I

should include some vocabulary in the beginning of my lesson to make sure the

students could better understand key elements of the latter parts of the lesson.

Also, TPR is a great way to help students remember vocabulary and other aspects of

foreign language. Since students are physically manipulating the vocabulary, there

is a 90% retention rate of information. Along with TPR, I also provided students

with the pictures of the words through the use of a PowerPoint. This use of

multisensory learning could occur along with dual coding. In order to demonstrate

that they had learned the crucial vocabulary terms, I created a work sheet similar to

the one I used in my second microteaching activity (matching pictures with phrases

using a word back).

Another aspect of my lesson that I really liked was the organization sheet and

use of videos. Most of my lesson was taught off of a PowerPoint. Sometimes,

lessons that solely involve a teacher talking off of a PowerPoint presentation can

lose the interest of his students. By handing out an organization sheet, it forced
students to stay engaged in the lesson. Also, the organization sheet would be very

useful to the students when they are completing their homework assignment. The

organization sheet only included key aspects of the lesson. This is a great way to

make sure students pay attention to the most important aspects of the lesson. Most

of the students involved in my culture lesson also enjoyed how I incorporated

videos into the presentation. I felt like the purposes of the videos were multifaceted.

Not only did the videos provide a way for me to bring technology into the classroom,

but they also provided students with examples of vocabulary and soccer in Spain.

While there are parts of my lesson that I am proud of, there are a few

improvements that I would make. The most significant change that I would make

would be to include more activities for the students to participate in. An example of

an activity that I would consider next time would be a reading activity. I would

include a news article about one of the soccer teams in the presentation or about

soccer in Spain in general. When looking for an article to use, I would have to make

sure that the article was not too advanced for my students. By making the students

read an article that was too advanced for them, this would raise the affective filter

and create a more restrictive learning environment. After reading the news article, I

would create questions that would test the student’s comprehension of the article.

Another activity that I would make sure to include would be a pair work activity. In

this activity, I would make two different worksheets. One student would have the

information for Real Madrid while the other student would have the information for

Barcelona. These students would need to ask each other questions in order to
complete the worksheet. This would be a great way for students to practice

speaking in L2 in addition to asking questions.

In addition to incorporating more activities to make the lesson more

engaging for students, I also noticed that I get frustrated at one point during the

microteaching activity. When I was talking about the rivalry between Real Madrid

and Barcelona, I had trouble with some of the numbers. I became frustrated and

switched to using L1. While we were able to use L1 in our culture lesson, I really

wanted to try and teach the lesson only speaking Spanish. This would allow me to

follow Krashen’s Input Hypothesis. By talking only in L2, there is a good chance that

the students would not understand all of the words that I was saying. This would

place them in the zone of (i+1). The area of (i+1) is where Krashen believed the

optimal amount of learning occurs. Also, I feel that I by showing my frustration in

such a manner would be bad for my students to see. The abrupt switch from L2 to

L1 could also be detrimental to the learning of the students in my class. Also, I

noticed that I say the word ‘bien’ many times throughout the lesson. By using the

word ‘bien’ frequently, it loses its meaning of a compliment.