Languages: memorisation of idioms

There is content that needs to be learnt and memorized and teachers need to be creative when preparing and presenting these aspects of the curriculum. Amanda presented a very interesting lesson on idioms in Afrikaans. She made 5 groups, with each group including 1 of the 5 students in the class with mother tongue Afrikaans speaking skills. That did not in any way influence the students understanding of idioms as these are learnt and are not easily used in everyday language. Each group had explanations of all the idioms and they had to guess which idiom goes with which explanation. Prizes were given to the group with most points and the rules had to be obeyed. It was a very engaging, exciting, thinking and a collaborative exercise. The students learnt the idioms and will not easily forget them!

Next we will find a series of videos where adverbs are taught in the first additional language scope. After this we will try to implement some of the broader lessons we have observed. These include: 1. Identifying the ‘aha’ moments, 2. Noticing how teachers and students react to these 3. Find the best ways to catch such moments. The next observation lesson will be Gala's.