OBE or don’t be…

In teaching, just like in cooking, acting, dancing or any other activity in life, you got to know your ingredients, your lines or moves. You have to be prepared and organized before teaching a lesson, cooking a great meal or before performing in front of audience. And most of all be passionate about what you are doing!

Know your staff!  If you are teaching the food pyramid – go and read about it! Understand it well before you stand in front of your learners, so when you consolidate you can stimulate their brains with challenging questions.

Preparation is a key to a successful and efficient lesson. You can have a great lesson plan in hand but if you didn’t organize and plan in advanced- the lesson can be poorly executed.  Make the windmill yourself before lesson, this will enable you to see what challenges your learners may have and the resources you need to provide them with.

If its Languages, Maths, Technology or any other learning area you teach – be passionate about it! Act, sing, interact with learners and you would find that the love for the subject has caught on to them.

The re-birth of South Africa in 1994 has brought the implementation of effective educational policies. Concurrently, the Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) system has been introduced to advance the teaching and learning of the Learning areas in schools in South Africa.

Whether the OBE is the right approach to teaching and learning I would leave that for research. I would like to provide some tips on three matters from this system:

·         Learner centre

·         Activity based approach

·         Developmental

The ten tips for teaching OBE style (based on above):

1.       Talk less, Listen more

2.       Encourage learners’ curiosity –wonder -(even if you don’t have the answers)

3.       Ask, Ask, Ask – the most relevant questions  (even if you don’t have the answers)

4.       Let learners make assumptions – don’t spoon feed them with providing answers

5.       Hands on – let learners experiment and do practical work

6.       Use group work – but ensure that everyone is eventually exposed to the same things

7.       Incorporate different methods of research (ICT, books, experts)

8.       Use multidiscipline approach – interact with teachers from other subjects

9.       Plan together with the phase to ensure learners’ progression

10.     Plan and be prepared before conducting lessons