Well, some people say that first impression is the most important thing.
Indeed. It also does work in teaching. In my opinion, the most crucial thing in teaching is how to make your student interested in you and what you're going to teach. It really is crucial because when your students have already interested, they will absorb the materials easier. Sometimes, as a student, it's still so hard for us to absorb the materials even though we're already interested. Could you imagine when your students are not interested? So, the first impression is a crucial thing. And now the problem is, how to make our students interested?
This is what we learned in micro teaching class.
Last meetings, we were taught how to begin a class and also to close a class. Actually there are many things that we can do to begin a class. There are some basic things like greeting, praying and checking students' attendance list. Now, how to introduce the materials? It could be done by brainstorming. This activity is meant to activate students' brain (?) to dig students' background knowledge. This activity is also meant to give perception of what they're going to learn. Beside that, singing a song can also be something that can be done to attract students' interest, especially young learners. For adults, telling stories is quite effective to begin a class. After your students seem interested, you can go drown to your materials.
Sometimes, I also use one of those things for my teaching activity. I often ask my students to do real things related to what I am going to teach. For example, when I'm going to teach how to read clock, I ask my students "When did you get up this morning?" or "When did you take a bath this morning?" to stimulate my students of what they're going to learn. From this class, I found other ways to do the openings and I will implement those in my next teachings.
Fighting!
