Students seem unwilling to get started on a task.
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Have you ensured there is a sufficient ENGAGE & STUDY stage. Is the task fully contextualised?
Have you provided or elicited personalised examples? Do the students have all the tools they need to become fully involved in the activity, e.g. sufficient knowledge of lexis, functional language etc?
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Students are off task, e.g. they are doing the wrong activity or have moved on to the next task before you want them to.
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Have you adapted the task to avoid this? e.g. have you created materials which control the activities you want the students to do?
Have you given a clear instruction & ICQ?
Are you monitoring so that you can help students stay on the right task?
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One group finishes before all the others.
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Have you anticipated that the stronger students may do this and thought about how the task can be extended? E.g. students give further examples, change groups, collect information for FB, monitor and help other groups etc...
Are you monitoring to ensure that the students are fully involved in and exploiting the task properly?
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Communication has broken down.
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Have you given the students a reason to speak? i.e. is there a communicative focus to the activity?
Do the students have all the lexis, structures and functions necessary to complete the task?
Have you set up the task with a clear instruction, demo and example followed by an ICQ?
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Some students are much stronger / more confident speakers than others.
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How will this affect your planning in terms of planning groupings and pairings?
Have you thought of strategies for encouraging turn-taking?
Can the weaker students benefit from working with stronger ones, or would the task better suit stronger and weaker groups?
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Students haven’t understood the instructions.
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Have you contextualised the task? i.e. do the students know why they are doing it and what the aim is?
Have you given staged instructions rather than a commentary on the whole activity?
Have you demonstrated, used a volunteer, checked with an ICQ?
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Students are using L1 during the task.
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Are you working on developing a culture of using only English in the classroom?
What are your strategies for insisting on English only?
In a multilingual class, how will you group the students?
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Students seem unwilling to work together.
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Are you aware of any prejudices or loyalties within the class?
Are you regularly changing pairings and groupings so that students become accustomed to working with different people, and so that they know that they will not be ‘stuck’ with their least favourite person for the whole class?
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