Competency-based Design and Teaching

Mini lecture and interactive activity combined is the key to engagement, with interconnected tasks building up to the end product. 

 

Knowledge discovered through trial and error is worth a thousand times more! With this workshop, my goal was to materialize a structure for lesson planning that is easy to understand and apply in everyday teaching. 

 

Based on the theme words and sentence patterns in Hanlin B3U4, What Do You Want to Be in the Future, I showed the workshop participants how to translate competency-based curriculum guidelines into a feasible lesson plan and step-by-step teaching procedures. 

 

The workshop itself was built upon the structure. I lectured on the knowledge and skills for ten minutes and enhanced it with a task-based activity, including ordering, ranking, microteaching, etc. This format helped a lot in engaging the audience throughout a three-hour long presentation. 

 

My goal was to help the teachers see the possibility of a competency-based lesson plan compatible with the good old fashioned lecturing. Using the textbook unit was a lot more relatable to teachers than big, fancy projects like ISA or SIEP international education. Students would have fun doing collaborative tasks in real-life scenarios, while teachers are still helping with test preparation. 

 

Of course, it would be impractical to try to make every class competency-based. It is still way more time-consuming than pure lecturing. However, this everlasting conflict between the student-centered ideal and test-driven reality will always coexist throughout our careers.