EXTENDING LEARNING IN A CONVERSATIONAL APPROACH

The teacher asks open ended questions to enable children to extend their ideas through thinking and reasoning for themselves. All ideas are valued. This empowers children to speak freely, and use everyday / emergent scientific language. At the appropriate time the teacher may introduce new scientific vocabulary and give opportunities to embed it. ‘Professor Sidney’ (a cardboard character) is used as a recording frame to support the use of scientific language. Words collected from the children are displayed along with the appropriate scientific words, introduced by an adult, for children to use themselves. This also promotes parent/child conversations when on display in the classroom.

If one of the team notes a misconception, then they can correct it at an appropriate later time. For instance, the class will come together to discuss their ideas in the next session.