Explaining (Leverhulme Primary Project Classroom Skills)

Explaining shows what explanation is and what it aims to do. It explores the various strategies open to teachers and by a combination of activities and discussion points it helps them to build up a repertoire of techniques suitable for various situations and to evaluate the effectiveness of their explanations in the classroom. It covers such issues as the use of an appropriate language register, the place of analogies, building on children's questions and coping strategies for effective explanation when the teacher is unfamiliar with the subject matter.