ELA TPE g

The candidate understands how to teach formal and informal speaking and listening skills, including collaboration, conversation, and presentation of knowledge and ideas.

What is this?

I taught this lesson about proper oral presentation skills to 12th graders in an intervention ELA class during my placement at St. Helena High School. It included a mini-lecture on good presenter habits and a few minutes on the requirements for the specific project they presented (shown on my ELA TPE c page), followed by a speaking and listening game called Toss and Talk. In the game, students had to toss around an inflatable dice with questions on it, and speak extemporaneously in response to the questions. Finally, they had time to outline their presentations.

Why did I choose it?

I chose this presentation skills lesson because it is an example of me explicitly building speaking and listening skills among my students. I shared and modeled good presenter habits for general, transferrable use, and also provided clear requirements for the presentations at hand so the students would know clearly how to achieve success. Then, I provided practice for them to gain comfortability speaking in front of their peers through the game at the end of the lesson so they could share their content with less nervousness. 

What did I learn?

Teaching this lesson taught me that to effectively teach speaking and listening, it is not only important to give clear instructions, but to have a welcoming classroom climate where students are comfortable with one another and have a positive attitude. The lesson also helped me to identify a growth area for myself, which was that I needed to work on constructively pushing students to do better when they are not meeting the expectation. I wished I'd had them speak for longer periods during the game, and I worked on being more assertive in this area in future lessons.