ICC Microteaching Demo - Week 14

ICC Microteaching Demo

The topic was safety culture.

I started off by saying "good evening" and by introducing the two readings regarding safety culture. One is about the Goyang Bus Terminal Fire and the other is about the Lac Megantic Railway Disaster of summer 2013 (Quebec, Canada).

I did edit the articles slightly as I wanted to remove all the internet advertising on the articles that were printed out. Looking back on the lesson I feel that I should have removed a few paragraphs to get the article down to 1 1/2 (one and a half) pages. On the second page are several lines that could be removed (example: the history of the terminal). I would also like to edit the Lac Megantic article too. Much of what is on the second page could be removed without causing students problems in understanding the accident. Now I should add that with font editing I could have gotten the articles down to one page too.

I am glad that my teacher talk (TT) was minimal as I quickly mentioned the articles, handed them out and told the students to answer the four questions regarding the articles.

Things I would change at this point. One: make different pairs. The students had the same partners for the previous four/five demos. Two: less questions. I could have removed the second question (How many people were killed in Goyang and Lac Megantic?) as I feel four was too many. The other questions: "What happened in the accidents?"; "What caused the accidents?"; and "Who is responseible for causing the accident and who must deal with the problems caused by the accident?" - were more than enough to keep the pairs busy reading and discussing.
Originally I was going to get the pairs to go into groups to share their answers to the four answers. As I was monitoring during the pairwork I noticed that answering the questions would take more than 3-4 minutes. So instead I asked the pairs as I walked around the answers to the questions focusing on #1 (what happened) and #4 (who caused it and who fixes it).
As I saw that I had little time left I moved onto the groupwork questions: "What could or should have been done by the government officials and workers to prevent these accidents?" and "Are these accidents the result of Korean or Canadian culture? Why, why not?". Instead I should have stuck to the plan and had them share their answers in the groups first. Then if I had more time I could have moved onto the group questions.

While the students were answering the questions in pairs I did not give them the answers of any hints. I asked them for their answer to the four questions and I gave feedback of confirmation (that is correct/yes/I agree, etc.) that I understood them. However, I should have asked follow up questions to make sure they fully understood the incidents and that they did not just skim for the answers and copy forgetting other pieces of information.