Let's continue by considering your own language as a teacher. Your voice is your main teaching aid. You can actually, consciously use its pitch, tone and pace to underpin the shape and changes of the lesson. Do you drop and slow your voice when moving from a lively passage to a quiet one ?
As we’ve said, the lesson has its story. This is what your plan is based on. We will do A; this will enable us to understand something (we’ll call it B). B will be defined in a transition and then carried forward into the next activity, C. It’s the carrying forward that counts. There is a thread, not a series of separate activities. If you have a clear and simple story, you have a coherent lesson. Obviously, then, pupils are most likely to make sense of the lesson if they understand the story, too
There is not the only way in which your own language generates a constructivist atmosphere. Teacher-talk is vital and is often at its best when most explicit. We’ve already talked about questioning and the need not only to plan a range of questions but to be explicit and straightforward about your own questions. It’s good to say, ‘There’s no right answer to this question...’, or to say, ‘This question does have a right answer.’ Or you could ask the pupils: ‘Do you think my question is the kind that only has one answer ?’. When pupils start discussing the language of the lesson, as well as its facts and ideas, they are involved in meta-learning. They are thinking at a high level.