Teaching skills’ exercise

Name of contributor: Shaili Shafai

Sections: All

Practicing Teaching Skills

Working with trainees from various backgrounds, I have observed that they often cite techniques they’ve learned in advanced classes or actions that are clear to them. However, they may not realise these techniques might not work for beginners.

To address this, one exercise we do together involves finding three different ways to give an instruction, even if these versions differ in subtle nuances.

Acknowledge Potential Misinterpretations: It’s important to recognise how instructions can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. If half of the class isn’t following the instructions, mere repetition won’t work. Instead, we need to engage in self-reflection and explore alternative ways to achieve the desired outcome.

Differentiate Between Actions and Results: Always analyse whether we are instructing an action or describing the result of an action. If it’s the latter, we need to provide clear, straightforward guidelines to help students achieve the desired result.

Consider Student Receptiveness: Understand that students’ receptiveness to instructions can vary based on their experience, familiarity with the language (especially if they are non-native speakers), understanding of anatomical references, and even their level of fatigue or alertness on a given day.

Adapt Instruction Delivery: Try to give instructions using familiar references, like the front of the body. Experiment with different verbs and access points. You might also consider using props to create the desired action or finding a simpler position to grasp it, then refer back to it in a more challenging context.

A few examples to practice with include: gripping the hips, moving the shoulder blades in, spreading the back thighs, or straightening the head.

This exercise continues to help us make our teaching more accessible and inclusive by diversifying our instructional tools.