PD with Dr. Jannie van Hees

Recently teachers form the senior school had PD with Dr. Jannie van Hees. She spoke about 'Developing  a Dialogic, Orally Expressive Classroom'. She challenged us about how much time we spend in the class developing students oral language skills. She highlighted the importance of gifting new vocabulary to students and giving them the opportunity to practise retaining information then recalling it later. I have to admit currently there is not a lot of this going on in my classroom. While students are given the opportunity to express and justify their thinking in various learning areas this needs to be done more explicitly. Currently there is no explicit opportunity for students to practise retaining and recalling information, and the new vocabulary they are being exposed to is minimal. In the next few weeks I will be endeavouring to start developing an orally expressive classroom. Watch this space.