TEFL: Reflections on losing my voice and Teacher Talking Time

Over the course of the weekend I happened to misplace my voice, very naughty of me I know, and so returned to teach this morning with the either or option of whispering [Which didn't hurt my voice at all] or speaking in an almost supervillan/ movie announcer (coming soon to a cinema near you, you thought it was safe to go outside...) type voice. As such I happily was forced to reduce my teacher talking time to a bare minimum (which coincidently was the action point from my last observation, don't you love "coincidences" like that).

One of the techniques I adopted was to check earlier finishers answers and if they got all the answers correct then I allowed them to initiate the class feedback acting like a teacher. I realised that they were using some language that they didn't normally in doing this to ask for answers/corrections, although they did reduce it to signals by the end [I'm not sure if I do that or speak and give signals]

I also realised  how useful speaking very softly can be and how many students can quieten down as soon as they realise that they need to in order to hear the teacher [sometimes even the most problematic child will be very quite simple to see if the teacher is telling him off or not!]

I also noticed how effective using my very deep strange voice could be to suddenly encourage more active lively discussion after periods of quietness [even if it did hurt!]

It also amazed me in general how if you do whisper, other people whisper to you! Even if you are just out and about having a conversation.

I think my overall conclusion was that I really can reduce my teacher talking time and perhaps it is worth trying speaking softer in general as a method to keep attention. I do, however, wish I had more time to experiment with no voice rather than having gained it back. I don't think I could pretend well enough to pull it off though!

[I hope you enjoyed this reflection on teaching please post comments and thoughts.]