Mixed-ability classes
- Luke Prodromou 21-22.06.2011
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As teachers, our voice is a good instrument. When we take the attendance , we can use this situation as a good chance for revision: instead of answering “Yes” or “I’m here”, the person has to answer with an important person’s name, with her role (eg. “My mother”), an important place or an important number. But you can also use the taking of the register to revise the activity they did during the weekend.
T1B Draw a cake , divide it into 3 parts and write in them: “Like”, “Don't mind”, “Don't like/ dislike”. The students guess how the teacher completed the circle, then they complete their circle, with their 2 / 3 examples, then you share this with a partner.
T1C Complete a card with your information, exchange the paper with a partner and he/she is going to present the person and ask the person questions (either he or the class) .
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Agree on the principle: students should be listening to each other ( you can also change student position).
T1C The circle activity supports the students in speaking. With the third activity you move to the present simple thirdperson “-s”. This activity helps them to listen to each other and not to get exposed, because the students presents his/her classmate.
T 2/3 Some things an early-finisher can do , in order not to disturb the rest of the class; we have to bear in mind ways to keep them occupied. When a student finishes earlier, you can tell him:
“If you finish early, listen to the music and write a story according to the music.”
Sometimes the early finishers can be used to help the 'buds' (slower developers), sometimes they can relax a moment or get extra exercise. You don't eat everything that is on the menu, you choose what to eat according to how you fee
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There are different levels of solutions to teaching in a mixed-ability class.
Luke Prodromou's motivation mountain :
R.
A.P.
Motivation
Testing vs. Teaching
Discipline-friendly techniques
Classroom management

Rules, regulations and rewards
Error or Terror
The textbook: learner input
4 With an image you divide the class into two groups and they say "I can see...", the teams take turns in saying one new item they can see, the team who says the last thing he sees, wins.
T5 The Buds and Flowers Learning Theory
The flowers are good students, the buds are the developing students, and the leaves are the quiet majority. The teachers are the stems. Self-esteem, motivation, enthusiasm are very important for teaching and learning, like the soil, the sun and the water for a plant. In the buds and flowers learning theory
Vygotsky affirms that you learn through social interaction, that learning is a social activity and that the zone of proximal development is supported by collaborative working.
TIP Dictation
The class has been divided into five groups; two had to write on slips of paper, why students succeed, and the other three groups why they fail. Luke then put the sentences together and made a dictation out of them: “
There are a number of reasons why students fail, the most important of which is lack of belief in themselves. In other words they think they can't make it, but in Switzerland students fail because they have to learn too many languages and as a result they loose their motivation. Students fail for very simple reasons, for example because the teacher doesn't explain the task clearly, so the student doesn't understand what to do.
We can help students succeed above all by making them more confident in themselves and also by making them like the subject. We can do this by helping them and supporting them so they know what they have to learn. But students also succeed when they are allowed to do tasks in ways they enjoy, by giving students choice we develop their selfesteem. In short students succeed when the relations in the classroom are good.
”
Individually students correct the dictation’s text, then they complete it in groups, then in the class as a whole the students read and correct the text in turns. The students who have a different version, read it aloud. The teacher accepts the linguistically correct sentences, and corrects only those that contain mistakes.
T6 Collective dictation
Procedure:
The students write a sentence or two on slips of paper. For example:
- I like watching TV because...
- I enjoy going to the cinema because...

The teacher collects the slips, he reads them out as a dictation made up of two paragraphs. As the teacher reads out the sentences she transfers them in the following ways:
1.
She corrects the errors
2.
She connects the fragments into a whole
3.
She brings the level of the text up to a higher standard by modifying the grammar and vocabulary
4.
She supplies any ideas, which are needed to enrich the text and facilitate the task.
T10 Activating the text You have a listening or a reading text in your textbook, you take some frequent words, give them to your students and you tell them that they have to listen to the text, and when their word is said, they stand up and sit down again. Then you read the text. After the activity you recap the words. This activity helps the kinesthetic intelligence and you help the student to embody the word. If you are the word and you do not know it, you want to know it. In this way you connect them with the text and they read it and look for the words they have heard in the text.
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Humor is important, so you can ask the student who is giggling why because it is good.
T7 Open-ended questions are very important and their level should vary from easy to more difficult and open. You use Yes / No questions, then the early finishers write a report by finding answers to Wh- questions, eg. “Renata has read a book in another language and when she was a teenager she watched a vampire film on TV. She has been to Paris and she has at least read a book by Dickens. She has watched a film starring Brad Pitt on
TV, but she has never read a book by Bill Bryson. Another thing she has never done is watch a film in an imax. I think she has been to New York and she wrote a poem when she was younger. She has also been to a selfdevelopment course.”
T8 Personalising: variation on using a textbook dialogue : divide the dialogue between two groups, and each group reads a character. Then you use the dialogue as a model to do a dialogue with an (imaginary) image of your family or a drawing. They can bring a picture. Then you show the dialogue with some deleted parts, and the students read it again, completing it, then you show the text with even less words and they have to read it again.
TIP You can use disappearing text, orally to practice memory. If they do not remember, they have to write the texts in small groups.
T9 Jumbled words.
There are some words taken from a text on the book and you tell the students: “Use the listed words to write sentences.”
Eg. "I am saying that I have nothing to say and poetry and I have nothing to say." Then you listen to the volunteers’ version of the text and after that you ask your students: “Do you want to see the original text? Open your book on page...”
"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." (John Cage)
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Teaching is like bowling. You just roll the ball down the middle and hope it touches most of the students, by making connections.
T11 Strangers in the textbook
Listen and underline the words that don't belong to the text.
You substitute some words in a song, they underline the substituted words and they correct the song by listening. Students have to do the same at home: they choose their song, substituting some words with words coming from the textbook. So you recycle vocabulary from the textbook. It is funny, because it shocks the student with unusual associations.
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“
Simple Simon Says
” is a good way to activate them, using imperatives and 1st conditionals and the parts of the body.
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The teacher has many different roles in the classroom: Teacher as an actor, an artist, a learner, a magician, a judge, a friend, a facilitator, a social worker, a counselor, a corrector, …
T12 Error or Terror
Find examples in the classroom. You give them a card with a correct sentence and another student gets the same sentence but with a difference (because it is a frequent mistake), eg.: I love my ankle vs. I love my uncle; It's very noisy (not interesting) vs. It's very boring; I eat when I'm hungry vs. I eat when I'm angry and the students have to choose which is the correct one: 1 or 2?
Then the students memorize their sentence and they look for the other half. This is a good activity for forming a dialogue.
Or at the end of the activity we can ask them to remember and write as many correct sentences they remember:
- I keep fit by jogging.
- I was lying on the beach.
- My mother has a problem with her back.
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With a text with too many mistakes, you could evaluate their second attempt.
An error is something they do not know, whereas a slip, a mistake is caused by lack of concentration.
Pupils expect to be corrected a lot, whereas teachers do not want to correct too much.
TIP Reformulating texts
Take a linguistically bad text, read it aloud correcting it, dictate it. You can do it with the whole text or with sentences.
You dictate sentences, and the students only write the correct sentence.
When you give them their work back, they get a correction chart with it, which reports the frequency of every kind of mistake, they have to look at their text and find examples of that kind of mistake.

TIP Good tries
One of these sentences is correct - which one? Correct the other ones.
TIP Find someone who...
You give a homework back to your students and they reflected on it. Use a “Find someone who” activity to help them to be aware of the kind of mistakes they make. . You use the correction of the homework of weak student and you do a fill-in-the-gap exercise. So they are evaluated.
T16?Visualizing texts
A student doesn't like the images in the book. He has to find another painting or a picture to replace it and describe it. Give an example of the pictures: " We are in a ballet school and there are many girls wearing white dresses with differently colored ribbons and a man with a stick standing in the middle.
”
T16? Songs
A student can choose a song in his mother tongue, he has to write down its first lines, translate them into English and let his classmates guess the song by its translation.
T16? Adverbs
Everybody writes a word (an adverb of manner) on a slip of paper. You collect them, create two teams, one does an action and a slip of paper with the adverb of manner. His team by guessing the action and adverb gets two points.
Alternatives -The 'actors' can choose the two words, but they can choose either to describe the adverb or to mime it.
Then the students have to write what their classmates did, eg.:
Daniela was writing a letter quickly.
Fiorenzo was combing his hair silently.
Luke was putting on his gloves politely.
Paola was listening to music happily.
Mariachiara was watching a tennis match silently.”
TIP Some students are like carps (common), but some students are like sharks, but some learners are like remoras. But for us the most successful learners are like dolphins, playful, enthusiastic, collaborative, communicative and intelligent.
22.06.2011
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The most important instrument that a teacher has in his repertoire is his voice , and his smile . But we have to be a model for our students, for instance: Luke polished his shoes to show it and to catch our attention.
TIP We sat in a circle according to the initial letter of our name, and when someone came late, the others had to move to give him the right place. This is to look at everybody, to build up rapport, to let them interact with each other.

To keep the students' attention and let them think.
The P s important for students to progress : p ractice, p ersonality, p rinciple (why am I doing this?).
T13 Magic tricks:

Can you guess the year of my birth 1951. There are years in our lives which are crossroads, that changed your life. Write a year that has changed your life. Write the number of the years that have passed since the important event. Then write your age this year. The total is 4022.
With this activity you practice the imperative, the past simple, the present perfect. You practiced the listening, taking notes, shortly speaking.

Think about a number between 3-9 (5), then multiply by 9 (45) and add up the two numbers (9) and take away 5 (5) and write it up. Convert the number in a letter of the alphabet (D). Write a European country that begins with that letter (Denmark).
Think of an animal whose name begins with the second letter of the country
(elephant), think of the colour of the animal (grey). Shout out the name of the animal and the colour (grey elephant).
T14 Magic Rapport Write on a small paper your name on one side, and the event that changed your life on the other side. Then talk about it with your partner. Then write down what your partner told you.
T15 True /False Give information about yourself and the students have to say "Yes, you...", "No, you...",
"I am 35 years old.”
“I met a Nobel Prize winner for medicine.”
“I am only a teacher.”
“I have a pet."
The teacher asks the students to give a piece of wrong information and correct it. Then other students have to say a piece of information, which can be true or false and the class has to guess whether it is true. If it isn’t and they guessed it, the speaker has to repeat the sentence by correcting the wrong information.
TIP Standing in a circle, one student says "My name is ... and I like..." accompanying the passion with the action. The next person repeats the previous sentence and says his sentence accompanied by a gesture. Then you can let the other students repeat the action. Then play it in a cumulative way.
TIP You can write numbers dealing with success in green and numbers which are connected with your failures in red, or write important places in your life. Let your students ask you about it.
26 You can adapt book questions to your class: e.g. ask your students where they have been to, write the places on the board and then theyl ask your questions from memory.
You can add "Wh-" column questions, so they get the details, so you are differentiating.
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Classroom management depends on: people, group dynamics, time, space, material, body language, voice, eyes, and language.
Sitting in a straight line is the typical formation in exams, but students, eyes, material, teacher, voice (can be inclusive and exclusive), ideas, body language.

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Kids shouting out : if you shout at them, or tell them not to shout, they will keep shouting.
You can make name cards for each name, and put them in a pocket and then you pass the card in the other pocket after you ask your student: "Do you want to answer?"
Or you throw the speaking ball to a student who can choose to answer the question or pass it to another person by throwing the ball.
TIP Find someone who had the same breakfast as you and sit next to him.
T17 Classroon Contract Divide the class into groups and some groups are pupils and some are teachers: respecting their role, they have to write the rules they have to respect as teachers or as students. Then compare the results (who has similar answers?). Use their rules as dictation .
TIP n giving instructions , you switch to their mother tongue, when you need to go on quickly and keep rapport.
TIP Or you can call the students with the dice: you throw the dice and call the student with that number to answer.
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The importance of knowing where you're going :
E:G of Board plan
- Pre-teach vocabulary
- Reading
- Grammar review
- Discussion
- Checking homework
- Giving new homework
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Cross-checking:
Question + Student1+cross check with student 2
TIP Messi is good because he scores and he assists (he helps students to score). We pass the ball, we pass the language to the students.
T19 Circular Writing
We wrote the story of e.g. William Tell, each member of the group adding a sentence to the previous sentence of the person to his right. Therefore four people and four stories.
T20 Famous People.
We wrote a maximum of three pieces of information about a famous Swiss on a slip of paper, on its back we wrote the name of the person. Then the teacher collected the slips of paper, the students took a piece of paper, wrote the names, he dictated the names in a column on the left-hand side of the board. The teacher distributed the slips of paper; he dictated the names to some volunteers who were going to dictate to the rest of the class, who wrote the text next to the name. Then they read it in turns to check and those who had some spelling troubles, asked for the correct spelling. You project the correct activity during the next lesson, so that they build up their self-esteem.

Their production will be used by the students as homework to correct the mistakes.Sometimes, ask your students to write their feedback on a new activity.
T21Dictogloss
You read a short dense text out twice at the normal speed. As it is being read, students jot down familiar words and phrases. Working in small groups the learners pool their fragments to produce a version of the text. Each group produces it's own version, aiming at grammatical accuracy and cohesion. In the end they open their books and compare their text with the one in their book.
T24 Musical Writing - Creating a story
Together we decide the characters, their ages and the setting. Then the students listen to a music and they write the continuation of the story according to it. Then you dictate the next part and they listen to another song to inspire them on how to continue the story.
Then you give them the end of the story ( Part of it ) and you play the last music.
Roger never forgot the day when he met Heidi in a chocolate factory. The air was fresh and filled with the smell of chocolate and he saw a beautiful woman smelling of vanilla.
Later that evening Roger and Heidi went to a beautiful rock concert on the main square in
Locarno.
In the end, after that fantastic evening, they flew to Las Vegas and got married in the Elvis
Presley Chapel.
The students then tell each other how their story is, picking ideas from the other. Then as homework they have to complete their text.
Then we received a slip of paper and we had to move into two groups: teaching, testing.
"...is stimulating". You can do it with food vocabulary: food items divided into healthy and unhealthy.
Write a new text and changing the names, situations.
The students receive a list of sentences (p. 10) and they change the anonymous subject into another.
T25 The Examiner's Hat
A grammar exercise
T26 From fragments to whole texts
They receive a text, take a sentence from it and write their own text around the sentence they've chosen. The other students receive their classmates' text and have to read it and find the sentence coming from the original text.
T28 Qualities of best teacher
Extra film Mona Lisa smile
Extra book Humanising Your Coursebook (Rinvolucri)
T29 Class lesson from the film Kes