preparing for interview with recruiters

[leenmafia]

Hi all. I was desperately searching for a demo lesson idea when I found this forum. I have to do a demo lesson (or mock teaching as they're called here) in front of a panel of 3 lecturers and several other candidates. Time length: 10 mins. Target students: 18-20 yr olds intermediate level.

What bothers me most is...what can I do in 10 mins that is good enough to showcase my teaching skills and at the same time ensure that the 'students' will be able to learn something from that time frame?

I found this excellent demo lesson which landed a teacher her current job. http://www.aacircle.com.au/forums/te...mo+lesson+plan

[gfell]

It's very hard to pull off a successful teaching demo in an interview. Reasons being:

• The interviews want you to give a demo, however it's not a "true" classroom environment.
• Time restrictions - Teaching what you normally would do in an hour over the space of 10 minutes.
• Many interviewers wont interact as would a student.

Well it's good that you know the age group to prepare for. With this age group, I would write in bullet point (4 points or so) of what will be covered over the following 1 hour lesson. Adults appreciate such outlines. Be sure to write this up for your demo lesson, so the panel can see what you would teach should you have the luxury of a full hour.

Before you start your teaching demo, explain to the panel that you will obviously shorten many aspects and interrupt students in order to move on.

This is something along the lines what I would do for a demo lesson:

1. 2 minutes: General chit chat. Teacher asks questions about the weekend, current news events and encourages students to talk about them (either in pairs or open class discussion). Light chit chat and try to choose a topic of interest to students.
2. 4 minutes: present a grammar structure. Eg: "The more the more". Write sample sentences on the board.
   - The more I study English, the more I am understood when travelling abroad.
   - The more I cook, the more I appreciate the flavours of food. (I know it's sounds better to say "The more I cook, the more I appreciate food", but it would possibly confuse students. So keep the sentences simple at this stage.)
   - The faster I walk, the faster I can arrive to my destination.
3. 2 minutes: Ask students to stand and mingle with each other using the same structure just presented. During this time you would join up with the odd student or move around checking on students.
4. 2 minutes: Ask students to write any sentence they want in their notebook. The rule however is it must use the above grammar structure. Then choose 1 student to write it on the board. Solicit from students if there are any errors in the sentence before correcting it. Idea is to get students to find errors instead of just having the teacher correct the sentences.

So that should be about it for a 10 minute lesson. If you don't have the time, you can always skip the last part. Be sure you also have a clock or watch so that you can keep track of time.

Good luck!

[leenmafia]

Thank u so much for the tips gfell. I'm typing out the lesson plan now. I plan to teach adjectives to describe people, much like the link I posted earlier but a simpler version. I'll post any updates soon. Thanks again!

[exported_kiwi]

Asking a few intelligent questions doesn't hurt either. These questions vary from place to place and are location/school specific. A little research on where you're going (school) and the city/town will be ample. It also shows the interviewer(s) that you have an interest in where you are and that you've taken the trouble to learn a few things about them...kinda gives them face in a round-about way!

there are soooo many ways, i usually just go in casual, dressed smartly, but casually so I'm comfortable, look em in the eye when they ask questions, relax and be friendly but not condescending....works for me. a bit of well placed humour works as well. I'm no expert, but my way works for me. In saying this, I'm different to all of you, as much as you're different to me, so whatever works for you, go with it.

Just relax, be confident but not arrogant, appear interested in the school and environs etc and things should be ok.
Good luck.

[reviewer]

Great advice. I find that asking intelligent questions shows two things - first of all, of course, your intelligence ( ) and second, that you care enough about the job to have learned a little about it.

[Tutor]

Many times people feel that during interview with recruiters the candidate just has to answer and not pose questions. This is not true. If you dont inquire with the recruiters then you tend to have less information about the job.

Remember "there can never be a dumb question" ... be it you who asks it or be it someone else.

[leenmafia]

My demo teaching yesterday went better than I dared hope. I created an hour's lesson plan even though I'm only supposed to teach for 10 minutes. The reason is because I want the panel to see that what I taught (which was adjectives that describe physical appearance) can be expanded into something communicative (a game which required students to use the sentence form I taught). If there's anywhere possible to upload the whole lesson plan in this forum, I will.

Prior to the demo teaching, all candidates (only 4 of us actually) were asked to write a short essay of about 100 words on 'Students who are proficient in the English Language have better chances in jobs opportunities' (ok something like that) and we had to write 8 sentences for given sentence structures e.g. Subject+verb, Subject+verb+object, subject+verb+complement, compound sentence, complex sentence etc.

All the candidates for the post had to 'teach' in front of a panel of 3 lecturers, one by one. There were no other people in the room (which was only the meeting room actually) and so to make sure I had no awkward moments during teaching, I asked them do I treat them like real students because I had some handouts to give during teaching. They were quite a real sport during the entire teaching (although I couldn't answer one question ugh).

After that they asked 'Whether I was comfortable teaching grammar' to which I can't remember answering because the other lecturer started asking me 'Which of the language aspect do you most feel comfortable teaching? Reading, writing, speaking...' The 3rd question was regarding my teaching experience because I ever taught in 2 different states in my country, Malaysia, and so they asked the difference between the ELLs in those 2 states. Apart from that, they also asked whether I believe in translating English to another language (Malay is our 1st lg).

Finally one of the lecturers asked me 'when did you prepare this?' while pointing to my Power Point slides to which I answered 'last night'. She then nodded a few times. Ok I'm not blowing my own horn or something but I can feel that they're impressed with my handouts (I made extra copies for all 3 lecturers and put them under the appendix) and lesson plan coz I was the only candidate to do so. The rest just brought their CDs or pen drive and taught from there. One taught college writing and brought a text which was badly photocopied on the transparency. One thing I learnt when I was still studying was that during presentation, less is more. On the slides I mean. Oh well, you can't tell what these people (the panel) think anyway. Furthermore I was the only candidate holding only a degree. The other 2 candidates had Masters degree and the 4th one has a Ph.D. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can get through to the second stage of interview!

I hope my experience will be useful to future educators going for a demo teaching/ mock teaching. Good luck!

[gfell]

Sounds like the type of good news we all like hearing. I think you did a good job because you took the time to plan and carefully map-out your teaching demo.

Preparation is the key to successful lessons, no matter how skilled a teacher is. You should always have a backup plan should things fall apart during your lesson. When I used to teach, I would also plan more than what I could fit into the lesson. So if 1 part of the lesson turned out to be a lemon, I would quickly move on.

Things I didn't cover in a lesson, I would then draw a line through it, and teach in the next lesson.

It would be great if you could upload your whole lesson plan. If you click the "Post Reply" button in the bottom left, you will notice a an "Attach Files" area in the bottom part of the following screen.

Take care and thanks for sharing.

[leenmafia]

Yes gfell, I really felt glad that I had prepared more than was required of me that time. So here is the entire lesson plan that I adapted from the link I posted earlier. Also included is the appendix; PowerPoint slides, students' handouts.

**Note**
The PowerPoint Handout for students (with 3 slides) is the one under Appendix A. The one with no label (with 6 slides on it) is the one I used during teaching. I left blank spaces in the students' handout to ensure that students actually listened and jot down notes from the one in front of the class.
Edit: I can't seem to upload a .ppt file so I can't show you the slides and students' handout.

For the celebrity cards, if you intend to use it, feel free to change the names because I had used local celebrities as they will be more interesting to the students, IMHO.

[gfell]

That is a superb lesson plan! No wonder why it went so smoothly for you. I have enabled the upload of ppt slides, so could you try uploading it again?

Cheers.