The micro-teach is a core part of the Level 3 Award in Education and Training (AET). It's your first formal opportunity to demonstrate your planning, delivery, and assessment skills in a supportive environment. While it can feel daunting, it's a valuable learning experience designed to build your confidence.
This guide breaks down what to expect and how to prepare, helping you pass with flying colours.
What Exactly is a Micro-Teach?
A micro-teach is a short teaching and learning session, typically 15 to 20 minutes long. You will deliver it to a small group of your peers, who act as your 'learners'. The primary goal is not to prove you are a perfect teacher, but to show you understand and can apply the basic principles of effective teaching, training, and assessment.
Your tutor will observe you, and your peers will provide feedback. You will then write a reflective account evaluating your own performance. It's a snapshot of your ability to plan, engage learners, manage time, and check for learning.
Step 1: Plan for Success
Thorough planning is the most important factor in a successful micro-teach. A well-structured session plan is your roadmap and provides evidence of your thought process. Don't leave it to chance.
- Choose a Simple Topic: Select a subject you are comfortable and familiar with. This is not the time to learn new content. Your goal is to demonstrate teaching skills, not subject mastery.
- Write a Clear Aim: What is the single, overall purpose of your session? Start your plan with a clear aim, for example: "To enable learners to identify three key health and safety risks in a workshop."
- Set SMART Outcomes: What will your learners be able to do by the end of the session? Create 2-3 specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) learning outcomes. For example: "By the end of this session, all learners will be able to list two safety checks for using a pillar drill."
- Structure Your Time: A 15-minute session disappears quickly. Allocate realistic timings for each part: an introduction (2-3 mins), a main activity (8-10 mins), and a conclusion with a check for understanding (3-4 mins).
- Plan Inclusive Activities: How will you engage your learners? Avoid just talking at them. Plan an interactive element like a Q&A, a paired discussion, a quick sorting activity, or labelling a diagram. Think about how you can meet different needs.
Step 2: Focus on Inclusive Delivery
During your session, your tutor wants to see you create a positive and inclusive learning environment where everyone can participate. Your delivery should bring your session plan to life.
- Start with a Hook: Grab your learners' attention from the outset. Use a thought-provoking question, a surprising fact, or a relatable scenario to introduce your topic.
- Communicate Clearly: Speak clearly, avoid jargon, and maintain open and friendly body language. Make eye contact with everyone in the group to build rapport.
- Use Your Resources: If you have prepared a handout, a visual aid, or props, make sure you use them effectively to support learning. Don't just read from a slide.
- Check for Understanding: Regularly ask questions to gauge if your learners are following you. This is a crucial skill. Use open questions (starting with How, Why, What) rather than closed questions that only require a 'yes' or 'no' answer.
- Keep an Eye on the Clock: Manage your time effectively, but try not to appear rushed. If you are running short on time, know which part of your activity you can shorten without losing the main learning point.
Step 3: Evidence Your Assessment
A key part of the AET is proving you can assess learning. You must show that you have checked whether your learners have met the learning outcomes you set. This doesn't have to be a formal test.
- Questioning: This is the simplest form of assessment. Asking targeted questions during and at the end of the session can show you what learners have understood.
- Observation: If your activity involves a practical task (e.g., sorting cards, labelling a diagram), you can observe learners to see if they can complete it successfully.
- Peer-Assessment: You could ask learners to quickly check a partner's answer against a model you provide.
- Exit Ticket: End the session by asking learners to write the answer to one key question on a slip of paper. This gives you clear evidence of their understanding.
Step 4: Write a Meaningful Reflection
Your self-evaluation is as important as the micro-teach itself. It demonstrates your capacity for reflective practice-a vital skill for any educator. You will need to consider your tutor's and peers' feedback alongside your own thoughts.
- Analyse Your Planning and Delivery: What went well and why? What didn't go to plan? Be specific. Instead of saying "It went well," say "My opening question successfully engaged the learners, as shown by their immediate responses."
- Evaluate Your Effectiveness: Critically assess how well you met your own learning outcomes. Did your chosen activity and assessment method work? How do you know?
- Identify Areas for Improvement: What would you do differently next time? This shows you are learning from the experience. For example: "Next time, I will use a larger font on my handout to ensure it is accessible for all learners."
Where this fits in QualityHero
Supporting new staff through qualifications like the AET is vital for building a high-quality teaching team. The principles of planning, inclusive delivery, and assessment demonstrated in a micro-teach are the foundation of good practice. Within QualityHero, managers can use the Toolkit Areas and CPD modules to log observations, track feedback, and monitor the professional development of individual tutors, ensuring that foundational skills are embedded and consistently improved across the provider.
Want this in your workspace?
QualityHero turns insights like this into actions, evidence and governance-ready reports.