So
I am back with a post after my micro-teaching. It really was a huge sense of
relief and accomplishment when it was over as I was under so much pressure if everything
will fall in place. I am really glad
that the trifles turned out fine and the students made trifles that were
prettier than mine as you can see from the image below:
Trifles made by students of the day :)
It was only after this session where I realised how
much effort is required to prepare for a practical session. I was very thankful
that my group and I made a wise decision by performing a dry run the day before
the practical session as it really tested how effective the time plan we
created was. As there were three teachers teaching concurrently in the session,
it was important that we helped each other as we were performing our
demonstration and illustrating our teaching points. Also, this was a good opportunity to provide
good feedback to another to improve ourselves for the big day.
On the actual day, as usual, all of us were terrified
and our fear of how we were going to perform was really eating our confidence.
I’d really like to thank all my friends, who encouraged me at that period. Also
the pre-group members helped us very willingly. I don’t know what I’d do
without them.
As soon as my turn began to take over the lesson, I felt
energized as I had a very responsive and engaged group of students. I believe
that I delivered the best I could at that point, but of course if I had to
critque myself there are a lot of pointers for improvement. For example,
because I was under a limit for each demonstration, as soon as I was nearing my
time limit, I gave instructions in a haste before student dismissal. This could
have been avoided if I had a standard pace from start to end. I should have
also accounted for questions and answers during the session.
Speaking of questions, I had received a couple of
interesting questions during my session and I thought I’d share them with you
today! As I was teaching the class on how fruits should be chosen, I was giving
them the general pointers like, it should be firm, free from wrinkles etc.. At
this point, a student questioned me: “How do you choose durians?”. I really
thought that was a very valid question and as the points that I was covering
were completely invalid for the durians. As I am not a fan of durians, I really
couldn’t answer this one, but I vaguely remember that durians are usually selected
based on visual appearance. It was then shared that, durians can actually be
chosen by shaking it. If the seed is rattling around with no resistance,
chances are the durian is overripe. If you cant hear or feel anything at all,
the durian flesh is hard and is at its best state for consumption. Did you know
that? There are of course many other ways to choose durians, but I will leave
that for you to find out at your own leisure with reference to this website: http://www.yearofthedurian.com/2012/11/how-to-choose-ripe-durian.html#.VEYPIfmUeSo
Another
question that I think is worth sharing was received as I was whipping cream. The
question goes like this: “How do I whip cream if I don’t have a whisk, hand
held mixer or a fork?” I really stumbled upon this one because I had no clue of
what the answer was but I was interested to know the answer. So I posted the
question back to the floor.
Apparently,
you can get whipped cream without having a a whisk, hand held mixer or a fork.
All you need is mason jar with a lid or a air tight container and whipping
cream. No tired arms from whisking, no lugging the stand mixer out just make a
few dollops of cream, no beaters to wash, or immersion blender to clean.
Instead, there is a method as imple as pouring whipping cream in a jar, sealing
the lid nice and tight and giving it a good shake. This sounds too good to be
true right? But believe it or not, I am the guarrantee here, we tried it and
yes! It really works! All you need to do is to recruit a vigourous shaker, and
it takes no longer than 3 minutes (depending on how much cream your working on)
to go from liquidy cream to perfect dessert topping. I was surprised on how
come this works at first, but looking at it in the point of view of science. The
mechanism really is the same, agitation.
Okay
so I guess I better end my post here, as I go any longer, I may just bore
everyone and I can just keep going on because so much happened during my micro
teaching. I hope I covered, whatever that is beneficial to everyone here! Oh! And
I just remembered… Remember I was going to share with everyone what’s the trick
to achieving perfect layering?
Here it is as promised:
- Pour agar over the fruits and allow it to set before the next layer so that every thing is evened out. The issue here is the waiting time, because you will need the agar to set before adding the next layer!
- You could find the diameter of your trifle glass/bowl and cut thin transparent agar slices according to the diameter and layer your trifle with this before adding anything of a liquidy consistensy to prevent seeping. The issue here is that, it isn’t very easy to cut the agar slices thin as if you have them too thick it becomes obvious and unappealing to the eye, also you must be sure that the diameter right or you will end up having to place a few layers of the agar slice.
I
really hope this helps when you make your own trifles J! Stay tuned for my next blog post on my teaching philosophy and
resourceful websites. Till then, it’s me, Devi signing off!
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