Planning for spontaneity

In this post, I want to look at how we can review the last term to see how pupils are using classroom language and how to use that to plan for this term and next September.  This is more about how pupils are interacting than how they are advancing in their content, or topic, language.  [...]

Progression in routines – Going for length and complexity

Let’s kick off this article by picking up on the question with which we ended the last one in this category: How does the language we already have in our routines fit into our own personal scheme for developing language learners? In other words, in your view, what do you see as the route for [...]

Setting up routines with mixed-ability classes: Going for linguistic range

What questions about language tend to arise from pupils in later stages of their study?  (e.g., Year 10, Year 11).  Which linguistic areas provoke most confusion or uncertainty? Interestingly, they are not always particularly complex sentence structures, but the “small” words, words having a particular grammatical function, the most familiar, almost incidental words, which can [...]

Classroom Routines – Yes, but how?

Routines, like any other item or activity in our repertoire, will succeed or fail according to how they are actually used in the classroom.  All the theory on why? is useful – without it, we would paddle around in linguistic puddles until the bell goes, with some routines working well, making waves, and others not, [...]

Routines – why use them?

In my last article, when I discussed layers of language, the point was raised that of all the layers, content language is the one which is least concerned with routines, and so language teaching which is dominated by an exaggerated concern for topics and their associated vocabulary denies pupils a wide range of opportunities to [...]