Teachers' questions: How should my students sit in the classroom?

Dear Mai,

Students should not always work individually, in pairs or in groups. Deciding whether to do an activity in pairs, groups or even individually depends on the activity itself, the students' level and how you think they will cope. But to keep it simple: the easier the task, the fewer students are needed. The following are some situations that will give you a better idea.

  • Whole class is used with activities that require quick feedback from the class. It should be used for quick answers and should not last for more than a couple of minutes as it can get really noisy, with students shouting out the answers.
  • A student working individually is for such activities as when students are given a role play and need to think about their roles before acting them out. In addition, it goes without saying that students need to be given time to read and write quietly and that this should be done individually.
  • Pair work is used with activities that would be challenging for one student alone. Such activities include exercises done to practise a new grammatical structure or vocabulary lexis. Students would benefit greatly if care is given to how they are paired up. It is important to pair students together according to their strength/weakness. Do not pair weak students together or strong students together. One of each would be perfect.
  • Group work is for activities that require the pooling of many ideas, more creative tasks such as projects and exercises that are exceptionally challenging.

Cambridge University Press has recently published The TKT Course which explains how students should be grouped as well as other valuable classroom management techniques and a whole range of information on recent teaching methodologies. To find out more about this useful book, why not visit the website of The TKT Course?

The TKT Course picture

                                                           Regards,

                                                               Amy

 

Amy Sarkiss is a Teacher Trainer and Editorial Consultant for Cambridge University Press in the Middle East and North Africa. Amy holds a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the American University in Cairo and the RSA CTEFLA and DTEFLA from Cambridge University. She was an EFL teacher for 14 years, the last 9 of which were at the British Council in Cairo.

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