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6. Embedding different Teaching Approaches

A good lesson will have a number of different activities, which when linked together help the children to meet the learning outcomes.

Classroom Example 2.6: Linking approaches together

In Grade 6 learners need to learn about ‘keeping money safe’ (Social Studies syllabus, section 6.3.1). The learning outcomes of a lesson might be:

To know some different ways of keeping money safe and saving

To understand how borrowing money works and interest rates

To be able to explain the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to saving and borrowing money.

Listen to the audio below or read the transcript about the activities teacher Martin used in his Grade 6 lesson. In your Teacher Notebook, make a note of all the teaching approaches used in this lesson.


Audio transcript

Martin, a Grade 6 teacher, taught his Grade 6 learners about keeping money safe. His lesson lasted 40 minutes and he planned 4 activities.

For the first activity Martin used a full class brainstorm to find out what learners already knew. He followed this with an explanation of different methods of keeping money safe reinforcing those learners had mentioned and adding some additional methods. During this activity he asked a range of different types of questions to elicit some of the advantages of each method. He made a table on the chalkboard with three columns:  method, advantages and disadvantages. He filled in the ‘method’ column.

After this full class activity, Martin put learners in pairs. He asked them to copy the table and to work together to fill it in, based on the whole class discussion. To ensure all the methods were discussed he asked the pairs in the front half of the class to start working from the top of the list, and the pairs in the back to start from the bottom of the list. As the learners were working, he moved around the pairs and talked to them, asked some individual questions, noticed who was doing well or struggling. There was a little bit of noise, but this was good as Martin could see learners were really interested in the topic. To finish this activity, he returned to the list on the chalkboard and asked some pairs the advantages and disadvantages they had identified for each method, writing these in the table on the chalkboard. He asked learners to listen carefully as they could not repeat anything someone had already said.

For the third activity, Martin worked again with the full class and he told a short story about two people who borrow some money to buy something. One uses a bank and one uses a local unofficial person. In the bank the interest rate is fixed, whereas the local person keeps putting up the interest rate. Martin wrote on the board 5 questions related to interest rates. He divided the class in 5 groups and asked each group to discuss the questions for a few minutes. 

To finish the lesson, Martin returned to the table on the board showing methods of saving money/keeping it safe followed by the 5 questions on interest rates. He asked the learners to add any advantages or disadvantages they had not thought of, to their own table and to work in pairs to answer the questions.

As the learners were working in pairs, Martin noticed that although learners had been confident identifying advantages and disadvantages of the different methods, they found it more difficult to answer the interest rates questions. After the lesson Martin decided to talk to the numeracy teacher and ask them to revise percentages in the next numeracy lesson, using real examples involving money.

Activity 2.13: Using local resources

Watch the video below about the Grade 1 teacher you have watched previously.

As you watch her teaching again, think about how the teacher is using different approaches throughout her lesson. 

In pairs discuss a follow-up activity that this teacher could do that would reinforce the learning.