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Rob Clark on Nancy Swartz's (online) expert explanations
Rob Clark on Nancy Swartz's (online) expert explanations
When I was in secondary school, one of my teachers used to get the attention of the whole room, you could hear a pin drop when she was talking to the class. She never shouted or raised her voice. At the time, I didn’t reflect much on this but I knew I wanted to listen to her (unlike some of my teachers). When I think back now, she always had a story, for everything!
Telling a story to engage an audience is a powerful technique used by many great speakers. Not any old story of course, my point here is the explicit link made to the content in order to engage students and make the experience memorable. Read more about this strategy here.
In this video example, Nancy is explaining the role of the Environmental Health Officer (EHO) to her students. It’s probably safe to assume that this is not Nancy’s most exciting topic to teach. However, by creating a simple real life link that the students can relate to, she makes the topic interesting and memorable.
“Mr Wayne had an unexpected visitor.”
"'How could you not want to hear what happens next?'"
"'How could you not want to hear what happens next?'"
How could you not want to hear what happens next? This deliberate approach by Nancy engages her audience and I for sure will be looking at how I create real life links to improve my explanation in the (virtual) classroom.
NS - Explanation/real world links.mp4Page updated
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