Chapter 6: Holding the Reins and Letting Them Loose – Giving Students Practice 97
Putting Students into Pairs and Groups
When it comes to organising your students for pair and group work, avoid
simply telling them to pair up themselves. It’s your responsibility to say who
works with whom and you ought to have a strategy for doing so.
Why? First, you’re likely to have mixed abilities in the class and you defi-
nitely don’t want two weak students working together. On the other hand, if
you have two very strong students it may be motivating for them to be put
together sometimes so that they can express themselves to their full poten-
tial. Unfortunately you sometimes have an annoying class member too (the
joker perhaps) and it would be unfair for the same student to be stuck with
that person in every activity. Share the load.
If you can, change the seating order in your classroom regularly. Ask the class to
sit in alphabetical order, in order of their front door numbers in their addresses
or according to their dates of birth. Use anything that moves them around.
For pairs, use your left hand to point to the first student (an open hand is
friendlier than a single finger) and then the right hand for the second student.
Show that they’re now a pair by bringing your palms together.
Of course, you can just say ‘you’re A and you’re B’ if the students understand
but you can also inject a bit of fun by using other vocabulary. You’ll get a
smile with: ‘You’re an apple and you’re a banana!
When you’re working with groups, it‘s great to switch them around after a
time so they can pool ideas. First you label each student A, B, C, or D and put
them together in a group of four. After they’ve had time to generate ideas you
can now group all the As, all the Bs and so on.
Encourage students to move their chairs so that they face each other if pos-
sible. Communication involves body language too.
Trying Out Practice and Production Activities
Practice and Production activities come in many different forms but they
should be interesting, varied and challenging according to the level of the
