Congrats! You have been invited for a second-round interview and this time, you will need to demonstrate your teaching ability through a demo lesson. You are given a copy of a chapter to teach – there’s a story of Belle and the target grammar. How should a candidate go from there to getting a position offer?
In our blog today, we would like to provide some questions for your brainstorming and a little insight into what it takes to set a candidate with potential apart from those who fall short of our expectations.
“What does this word mean?”
Your shy student may not ask this question even if she isn’t quite sure what something means. It might not be a bad idea to check her understanding and prior to the lesson,
anticipate what words or expressions in the chapter she may be having problems with. How would you explain a word in simple words she could comprehend? Sometimes, coming up
with a context in addition to your explanation may also help her visualize and deduce its meaning.
“I was listening to my teacher talk the whole time…”
Learners studying at an Eikaiwa school come for a lesson aiming to improve their speaking fluency and accuracy. How would you carefully balance Teacher Talking Time and the student’s and explain a certain grammar point given a limited amount of time? What sort of speaking activities would you design and carry out for her to practice for the rest and the
majority of the lesson time?
“Who am I speaking to?”
We embrace diversity here at our school. Lesson Partners come from different countries and all walks of life and we each have something of our own culture and personal experiences to offer, which can be shared to build rapport at the beginning of the lesson. A little bit of free chat is good, but note that not every student likes free talk and most expect their lessons to be done by following some textbook framework.
“Am I speaking correctly and being understood?”
The focus of a lesson here is on speaking, but it doesn’t mean that we teachers should let those mistakes pass without pointing them out. Correcting every single mistake disrupts
the natural conversation flow; not correcting at all does not do any good to the student either. Consider delayed corrections and which lesson phase you are at. Making corrections certainly takes a more dominant role during a target grammar drill than a warm-up chat at the beginning, when the main objective is to help her relax and set rapport.
Best of luck with your demo lesson!
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