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Here's a Facebook chat on this topic

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Let's start up today's online chat! Our topic is 'making the most of big, small and mixed-ability classes'. Here to host it and answer your questions are Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, Karen Frazier...

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A Facebook chat on this topic:

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Let's start up today's online chat! Our topic is 'making the most of big, small and mixed-ability classes'. Here to host it and answer your questions are Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, Karen Frazier...

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Here's a recording of Barbara's webinar on 'Getting the best from big, small and mixed-ability classes': https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/meeting.jnlp?suid=M.CB4A1D3BCCBA0C4DCFFC850EAD8D25&sid=2011204

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Blackboard Collaborate | Launching Blackboard Collaborate

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Blackboard Collaborate software solutions offer a social, interactive learning experience with virtual classrooms, online conferencing, instant messaging and more collaboration tools.

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Have your students create and make videos together. Pair the higher level students with the others and let them have fun creating together. They love to make their own videos!

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Strategies for large teenage classes

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Videos and open ended activities

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Barbara H. Sakamoto is going to give a webinar next Friday ( Feb 22nd) on 'Getting the best from big, small and mixed-ability classes' She also created a Wallwisher, now called Padlet for all of us share our tips. It made me reflect on my own experiences with mixed-abilities groups (small groups) and how I...

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Getting the best from a mixed-ability young learner class

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Barbara Hoskins, co-author of Let's Go, shares some tips on getting the best from students in a mixed-ability class. For more free videos, webinars, articles, sample lessons and advice, visit the Let's Share page at http://oxford.ly/eltshare

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Getting the best from a mixed-ability young learner class

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Barbara Hoskins, co-author of Let's Go, shares some tips on getting the best from students in a mixed-ability class. For more free videos, webinars, articles, sample lessons and advice, visit the Let's Share page at http://oxford.ly/eltshare

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Getting the best from a large young learner class

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Barbara Hoskins, co-author of Let's Go, shares some tips on getting the best from students in a large class. For more free videos, webinars, articles, sample lessons and advice, visit the Let's Share page at http://oxford.ly/eltshare

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Open-ended activities allow learners with different abilities and language
knowledge to express themselves. I use short videos or music videoclips to
generate Memory Games for instance. Before pairing them up, I play the video
without any instruction. Then, I pair or group them together and create tasks
where learners can contribute to the success of the task according to their
own abilities. It involves watching attentively and remembering. One simple
task we can give  is to ask them to watch and pay attention to a specif topic
and write down all words related to the topic within a certain time frame or
if there is a narrative, learners can retell the story by discussing and noting down
all the details they remember. They can work on memory games individually too.
Teens love it. A sample of it in Image + Sound + Color post below.

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Barbara H. Sakamoto is going to give a webinar next Friday ( Feb 22nd) on 'Getting the best from big, small and mixed-ability classes'

She also created a Wallwisher, now called Padlet for all of us share our tips.

It made me reflect on my own experiences with mixed-abilities groups (small groups) and how I work with them to make sure all of them have the chance to develop in their own way and I have a chance to check where each of them is. I totally agree with Barbara that even within a group of students placed in the same level of a course can have an age gap, for example, and we need to take into consideration their needs as well. I shall remember this.

Working with short videos (videos clips, short stories) and open-ended activities really have helped me working with mixed-abilities groups. There is a number of ways I work with them and unfortunally I haven't really registered them as I should have. This is one of my PD resolutions this year. Keep an online portfolio of the worksheets and Learners' samples, and also the blog as a reflective and registering tool.

If anyone have tips on how to work with mixed-ability classes, please do share on Padlet wall. I have already added my two cents and here is a post that has an example of how I usually work with my teens and open-ended activities. They love when sound and image are used in class. That really draws their attention to the subject matter.

Check out these short videos, great advice there!
Arranging large groups What is a mixed-ability class like?
On teaching Village we can read and learn from other teachers too through the post comments on ' Boisterous Boys and Bored Girls" and also through Barbara's Facebook page.

This entry was posted in Reflection by Rose Bard. Bookmark the permalink.

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Barbara H. Sakamoto is going to give a webinar next Friday ( Feb 22nd) on 'Getting the best from big, small and mixed-ability classes' She also created a Wallwisher, now called Padlet for all of us share our tips. It made me reflect on my own experiences with mixed-abilities groups (small groups) and how I...

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I often use cooperative learning techniques in dealing with the case of big/small and mixed ability classes. It makes my life easier not only in terms of delivering the materials but also in managing the class, and the students enjoy them too. I did classroom action research on cooperative learning techniques few years ago. The result shows students enjoy working in groups since it is less threatening as they have opportunity to practice more. They favor some techniques of CL. They see the techniques fun and this makes them see English fun too

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When I put kids in groups, I often use card games for practice. I imbed rules in the game such that if any kid catches another kid speaking the mother tongue, they get an advantage in the game. In that way, all my kids are monitoring each other to keep them speaking in English.

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I usually ask some reliable students or early finishers to be my 'assistant' to help in monitoring class work.

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Have higher level students ASK the questions for the others to answer. Converting an English statement to a Wh- question requires 17 mental steps, so is much more challenging. Besides, we should teach ALL of the language, not just the half about answering questions. Our students also need to learn how to ASK questions to get to true communicative competence.

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Web quests are great activities for mixed ability classes and I get my teenagers paired by stronger to weaker learners. This works well.

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Peer pair work with one strong student leading another. Group work customized by ability. Games and activities in which the element of chance is more important to winning than ability.

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Once a month, in my EFL classes I make them read newspaper articles. So I buy the Buenos Aires Herald (excellent resource!!!) and ...YES ONE NEWSPAPER FOR 25 KIDS!!!, give each group a sheet and ask them to read and summarise one or two articles. How? the most complex pieces of news go to those A-B students, who are already mixed with C-D ones ...but they don´t know that! Sports section for boys, Entertainment, Art, for some girls and if there is something concerning Field Hockey I make the girls who play for the school team read about it. I am aware that they are not focusing on the same Vocabulary topics, but at least they read, scan, skim and answer anything I ask them to do. If we have time, we act out some tv news programs, CNN, BBC and they adore that!

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Once I get to know my students, I work on sitting arrangement so I will always have mixed ability sub-groups. It is not that I place all the best together and separate the rest, I just mixed them . It is a big effort for me for I have to be careful to not hurt anybody´s feelings, etc.