Transform Teaching with Dialogue and Play-Based Learning

Nonkululeko Maringa

April 29, 2025

It is commonly observed that to teach children new knowledge and concepts, you must tell them all they need to know. However, this traditional view doesn’t fully align with how children naturally learn. While Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory emphasises the role of language in cognitive development, this does not imply that teachers should rely on non-stop talking. In fact, talking at your learners can hinder opportunities for interaction, exploration, and the development of vital social and cognitive skills.

Simply talking at children does not create an environment where they can interact, play, and develop social skills (Harrison, 2020a).Moreover, it’s unrealistic to expect children to stay engaged throughout the day through passive listening. This blog explores how teachers can create interactive, dialogue-rich learning spaces through the environment and invitations to play. . So, the essential question arises:

The Environment as the Third Teacher

Reggio Emilia’s Influence

The key lies in harnessing the environment as the “third teacher”. Inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach, emphasised the importance of the environment in promoting learning (Harrison, 2020b) and conceptualised that space is a necessary source of educational provocation and insight.

A rich and engaging classroom setting fosters deeper thinking, creativity, and holistic development (Robson, 2016).

Self-directed and Sensory Learning

According to Harrison (2020b) in Professional Studies for the Foundation Phase 1: Classroom Practice (F-PFS 121), children learn best when given the freedom to:

Explore concepts independently,
Engage their senses and bodies,
Communicate through play and storytelling,
Build skills through hands-on interaction.

These ideas also align with:
• Vygotsky’s theory of learning through social, collaborative play,
• Montessori’s belief in learning through the senses and self-directed activity.

Teaching through Invitations to Play

Why Use Invitations to Play?

To move away from a teacher-led, talk-heavy model of teaching, we can design invitations to play—thoughtfully arranged, open-ended provocations that spark curiosity, collaboration, and conversation. Rooted in play-based pedagogy and inspired by the idea of the environment as the “third teacher” (Reggio Emilia), these invitations offer rich opportunities for learners to explore concepts, interact with peers, and engage in meaningful dialogue. Go beyond the typical “theme table” and instead let your entire classroom reflect the weekly theme.

Thematic Example: “Oceans”

Let’s explore the theme “Oceans” as an example of how to bring concepts and skills to life across different classroom zones and illustrate how dialogue can be cultivated across various learning areas.

Learning Zones and Dialogue Opportunities

Art Table

(OpenAI 2025)

Provide shells and paint for creative expression.
Set out sand playdough with shells, sea animals, coloured pasta for coral, and glass beads along with ocean scenes and coral reef images to spark ideas.

At the art table, rich opportunities for expressive dialogue unfold as learners interact with natural and creative materials. You can encourage learners to talk about their process by asking, “Tell me about what you made?” or “How does that shell/playdough feel in your hand?” As learners create ocean scenes, they will describe colours, shapes, and sensations. They will use imaginative language and descriptive vocabulary such as “This coral is bumpy” or “My fish is hiding behind the rock”.

Sensory Tray

(OpenAI, 2025)

Fill the tray with water and tint it using blue food colouring, add seaweed-like plastic plants, and sea creatures, rocks and some sand. Add cups and spoons for pouring and scooping opportunities.
Alternatively add magnetic fish toys and fishing rods.

The sensory tray offers a vibrant platform for rich, layered dialogue and great excitement. As your learners explore the textures, colours, and materials, you can prompt them to use descriptive language by asking, “How does the sand feel between your fingers?” or “Can you describe the sound the water makes when you pour it into the cup?” This will encourage them to use expressive language and engage their senses too.

During imaginative play, learners often negotiate roles or actions with their friends: “You be the scuba diver and I’ll catch the fish,” or “Let’s make a home for the octopus together.” Learners also wonder aloud and investigate together: “Why does the fish float on this side?” or “What happens if we add more water?” You can use these moments to ask open-ended questions that encourage prediction, reasoning, and reflection. Through these interactions, your learners will build vocabulary, practise social interaction, and begin to explore early scientific concepts.

Perceptual Table

(OpenAI, 2025)

Cut or trace wave patterns on paper.
Practice letter formation in coloured salt trays using fingers or brushes.
Build ocean-themed puzzles.

At this table, learners engage in reflective and symbolic dialogue. As they trace shapes or complete puzzles, you might ask, “You made a big curve—does that look like a wave?” or introduce vocabulary: “That pattern is called a spiral.” Learners use problem-solving language during puzzles (“This fits the tail!”) and describe letters or sounds (“This makes the ‘sss’ sound.”). Your questions and comments help build their vocabulary, spatial reasoning, and fine motor skills.

Mathematics Table

(Engelbrecht, 2025)

Make tangrams of sea animals.
Make flashcards of large sea animals (e.g. whales, giant squids, a great white shark). Attach the same length of string as the length of the animal to the flashcard for learners to lay out and compare lengths to their own height.

Learners will use comparative language such as “taller,” “shorter,” and “longer” and use shape names when building tangrams (“triangle,” “square”). The questions you ask can promote early mathematical reasoning and vocabulary. You can also spark curiosity and reasoning by asking, “Who do you think is taller—you or the great white shark?” or “Why might a whale need to be so big?”

Science Centre

(OpenAI,2025)

(Sciencefacts.net, 2023)

Fill five jars with varying depths of blue water using food colouring.
Learners can order jars from shallowest to deepest and match to ocean zones using a printable chart. Ensure your chart has different images of the different types of fish that live in each zone.

Learners will engage in collaborative discussions while comparing, categorising, and ordering the different jars. You can model language for hypothesising (“Maybe deeper water blocks more light?”) and guide vocabulary development (“darker,” “deepest,” “shallowest”), supporting scientific thinking. Learners are naturally curious about what they don’t know, so you can encourage inquiry-based thinking by asking them “Which fish lives where it’s almost dark?” and “Why do you think that fish has light on its head?” This could spark a rich discussion on the angler fish (the fish with the light), and learning that it uses the bioluminescent lure on its head to attract prey in the dark depths of the ocean.

Reading Corner

Feature storybooks that tie into the theme, such as:

Sharing a Shell – Julia Donaldson
The Rainbow Fish – Marcus Pfister
The Snail and the Whale – Julia Donaldson
The Fish with the Deep-Sea Smile – Margaret Wise Brown
The Fish Who Could Wish – John Bush
Hooray for Fish – Lucy Collins
Mister Seahorse – Eric Carle
My First Book of Southern African Ocean Life – Roberta Griffiths
The Big Book of the Blue – Yuval Zommer
Whale – Nicola Davies

The reading corner allows learners to engage with books independently or with their friends, even before they can read. Here, learners will engage in dialogue while looking at the pictures, when retelling familiar stories, or inventing their own based on the images they see.

Books with strong visual elements, like The Rainbow Fish or Sharing a Shell, offer storytelling cues that invite learners to reconstruct the plot or imagine new endings, fostering imaginative and reflective thinking. Meanwhile, factual books such as My First Book of Southern African Ocean Life offer an opportunity for descriptive and scientific dialogue. Learners may point out features of a sea creature and ask a friend, “Did you know dolphins breathe air like us?” or compare what they see in the book to what’s in the sensory tray or science centre.

Your learners will collaborate, share their interpretations, and build vocabulary through peer-to-peer exchanges—demonstrating that learning doesn’t depend solely on the teacher talking, but on making meaning together.

Fantasy Corner

Underwater Scene:

Hang blue fabric from ceiling for ocean waves.
Add nets, fish images, DIY cardboard sharks, goggles, and fins.
Encourage children to role-play as scuba divers.

Beach Scene:

Set out beach towels, sunglasses, an umbrella, buckets and spades.
Allow learners to “go on holiday” and tell stories.

In the fantasy corner, your learners will assume characters and co-create stories: “I’m the lifeguard, you’re the jellyfish” or “Let’s swim to the treasure cave!” This type of imaginative dialogue helps learners negotiate ideas, assign roles, and solve pretend problems. You can support this by offering props that prompt new narratives. Learners often echo language from books, songs, or class discussions, showing how ideas transfer across play. Through storytelling and role-play, learners practice perspective-taking, language fluency, and social-emotional expression.

Transforming your teaching from a talk-heavy approach to an experiential, play-based strategy opens the door to richer learning. It also creates space for children’s voices, choices, and natural curiosity to lead the way. Remember: learners will learn best when they are actively engaged with their environment, their peers, and the materials around them (Harrison, 2020b).

So, as you plan your next classroom theme, ask yourself: Where in this space will learners talk, wonder, and discover together? Let your room speak as loudly as you do—through play, materials, and the voices of curious learners.

References

Harrison, G. (2020a). English Home and First Additional Language and Literacy Teaching in the Foundation Phase 1. SANTS Private Higher Education Institution. Pretoria: BusinessPrint.

Harrison, G. (2020b). Professional Studies in the Foundation Phase 1: Classroom Practice. SANTS Private Higher Education Institution. Pretoria: BusinessPrint.

Robson, K (2016). Children’s views of the learning environment: A study exploring the Reggio Emilia Principle of the environment as the third teacher. [Master’s thesis, Lakehead University.

Vygotsky, L. (1978.) Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. In (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman, (Eds.). (1978). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.