Teaching in a Multi-Level Class
It’s not always possible to have a class of English learners that is all the same level. In fact, it’s pretty impossible. Even if students have the same basic level, some will be good at speaking but slow at reading, and others may be good at grammar but need work in speaking. You may also have beginners who are educated and literate in their own language, and other beginners who have only competed the equivalent of elementary school.
How Do You Teach a Multi-Level Class?
Let’s say you have advertised your English class and on the first night, six students come. Two are intermediate learners, one is an advanced beginner, one is an absolute beginner, and two are more advanced. One has Tagalog as a first language, 4 are native Spanish speakers, and one speaks Dari. How do you structure a class that will engage all of them and keep them coming back?
It can take a little extra time to prepare an engaging lesson for multiple levels, but here are some tips for how to make it a little easier. Let’s discuss four teaching strategies you can use to have a successful multi-level classroom:
1. Start with a common language objective for all
2. Strategically group students for pair and team work
3. Teach the same thing in multiple ways
4. Teach around themes
1. Start with a Common Language Objective for All
Begin your class with everyone together. Everyone will study the same material, usually a reading or listening text. Discuss the lesson’s language objective – usually a grammar or vocabulary topic. Teach to the level of the majority of your students.
As you call on students to answer practice questions about the lesson, check each one’s understanding of the lesson, varying the complexity of your speech for each student. When you are finished with your teaching time, group your students for leveled learning activities.
2. Strategically Group Students for Pair and Team Work
Spending much of your class time in groups is a good strategy whether you have students of the same level or of different levels. Students will benefit from increased interaction with their peers and more opportunities to speak and actively participate in the lesson.
Lower-level students who tend to be more reserved in a large group may feel more comfortable asking for help from a classmate in a small group setting. Small group work can also help your students to get to know each other, make friends, and return to class more often.
How Should I Group My Students?
The way you group students may differ from class to class, depending on each student’s background, strengths, and weaknesses with any given topic.
Let’s discuss the two most common ways to create groups for your adult ESL students. You can group students of similar levels together, or you can group higher level students with lower level students. If you teach children, you can also group them by age.
Grouping Students with Similar Levels
Same-level groups are good for topics like grammar, reading texts, and worksheets. This is where you provide basic instruction as a class and break them down into smaller groups for more individualized learning.
When you group students with similar levels together, it gives you a good opportunity to maximize your teaching time. As you circulate around the class, your groups of similar levels will typically have the same questions. Let them discuss the lesson for a few minutes, see if they can answer each others’ questions, then ask them how you can help with any problems they are having.
Watch carefully to see who is completing the work quickly and who is struggling. If you see a student struggling, vary their assignment and be sure it is something they can accomplish.
For example, if a student is struggling with a grammar worksheet that you thought would match their level, encourage them to write the vocabulary words instead, perhaps thinking of sample sentences. Have some options in mind for these situations.
Grouping Students with Different Levels
You can also group higher-level students with lower-level students. Multi-level groups work well for speaking practice and class projects. Small multi-level groups are also good for games, such as a taboo-type game for ESL, or a Pictionary game. Small groups allow for more students to participate in the game and get speaking practice as they play.
Extra Challenges for Higher-Level Students
Give your higher level students the opportunity to explain a grammar concept to a lower level student. They can also act as translators if you invite a guest speaker to talk to your class. This helps the lower level student and boosts the confidence level of the more advanced student.
If you have a situation where you accept new students at any time, you can assign an upper level student to help the newcomer get situated, catch them up on the topic of the lesson, and help with any registration paperwork. Encourage everything to be done in English, even if your advanced student and the newcomer share a first language. This gives everyone an opportunity to apply their English skills to a practical task and feel more empowered and ready to learn more.
3. Teach the Same Thing in Multiple Ways
When you have a multi-level class, it does require a little more preparation time and more classroom management. After you have chosen the topic and learning objective for your lesson, you will need to prepare different activities for the different levels of learners you have.
Sample Lesson in a Multi-Level Class
Here’s an example. Let’s say the topic of your lesson is one of Jesus’ parables, and your learning objective is the present perfect tense.
- Present your lesson to the group based on the level of the majority of students.
- Group your students by level, same-level students together.
- Higher-level students can finish all the questions on the worksheet, then write a short dialogue using the present perfect tense to perform in front of the class.
- Lower-level groups can do the first half of the worksheet questions and prepare some sentences using the present perfect tense.
- Beginners can practice pronouncing and spelling the vocabulary words and create simple sentences.
Circulate and Monitor
As you circulate around the room, you will normally spend the most time with your beginners. When you come back as a large group, the higher-level students can perform their dialogues, lower-level students can write their sentences on the board for correction, and your beginners can read the vocabulary words out loud.
What If My Advanced Students Get Bored?
You will need to have extra materials available for students who finish their work quickly – maybe an extra worksheet, extra reading material, or even a tablet or laptop to read the news and do writing tasks. This is great practice for real life. Give them this freedom with you as their safety net, and see how quickly they learn. This also gives you more time to spend with the students who may need more help.
4. Teach Around Themes
Students of all levels can engage with a lesson taught around a theme like a Bible story. Beginning students can learn some of the vocabulary and simple grammar used in the story, and more advanced students can answer more detailed thinking questions about the story in English, exploring more vocabulary that they might need to successfully answer the questions. This can help you maximize your preparation time and help students remember a topic more easily.
Another Example of Teaching with Multi-Level Groups
Here’s an example of how you might structure a class period when you are teaching multiple levels.
Large Group Opening Session
Let’s say your theme is part of the story of Noah’s Ark. Choose a learning objective, usually a grammar topic or a vocabulary topic like prefixes or suffixes. Present your lesson at the level of the majority of your students. Show the class a picture of Noah’s Ark, then divide them into same-level groups.
Same-Level Group Work
Give your students different tasks to do, depending on their level. Beginners could think of vocabulary words they would use to describe things in the picture. Intermediate students could create sentences based on the picture. Higher-level students can write an entire well-structured paragraph using a reading text along with the picture to summarize the story and/or the lessons taught, with correct grammar and spelling.
Another possibility is having them do different versions of the same worksheet you have prepared in advance.
Large Group Sharing Time
Come back together as a large group and allow students to share their work, whether it’s using their words to describe the picture, writing sentences on the board, or reading paragraphs out loud. Students are still learning from each other as they listen and interact in English.
Multi-Level Groups for an End-of-Class Activity
You could then divide the class into multi-level groups for another activity, typically an end-of-lesson game like Pictionary, using game cards with animals from Noah’s Ark or other nouns used in the lesson, like clouds and rainbows.
More Ideas for Multi-Level Classrooms
Think of Your Multi-Level Class as a Large Family
A multi-level classroom is similar to a family with children of different ages. By necessity, children in a large family learn to be more independent, because parents have limited time. In an ideal situation, families may eat dinner together, and after dinner children work independently on their own tasks. Mom and dad are present to ask questions and check progress, but most of the time the children are working on a task assigned by a parent or teacher, with the older ones helping the younger. Outside of the family, children also have time with siblings and friends closer to their own age and at their own level.
Encourage Your Students to Interact with Each Other
Don’t hesitate to provide time for your students to interact with each other on a more casual basis, as long as they are all speaking English! The beginning of the lesson is the best time for this, as you are waiting for students to arrive and warming up their “English brains” for the lesson ahead.
Note: It’s up to you if you want to start the lesson on time or wait for stragglers. Starting the lesson on time can encourage your students to be punctual, but there may not be time or energy for casual conversation at the end of the lesson. You could build in a short break time in the middle of the lesson to accomplish this goal. Delaying the actual starting time of the lesson by engaging with your students could also indicate that it’s okay to be late – probably something you don’t want to encourage.
Teaching Vocabulary to Multi-Level Classes
Vocabulary can be as challenging as grammar. Beginners can learn basic words while intermediate learners can study how a noun can transform into an adjective by adding -ly. Advanced learners can learn about how noun in their list can also be a verb if it is pronounced differently. (for example, record, permit, and import). .
Teaching Pronunciation to Multi-Level Classes
Students of any level can benefit from pronunciation practice. Some beginners will have very good pronunciation, while some advanced students can barely be understood. Pronunciation is a room leveler!
Try a bingo game with words instead of numbers and let the students take turns calling the words to see if they can be understood well enough for their classmates to understand what word they are saying. At other times, work with beginners on basic English sounds, vowels and consonants. If advanced students have adequate pronunciation, work with them on the more subtle points of intonation and stress, as well as specific sounds that may be giving them trouble.
Teaching Writing to Multi-Level Classes
All students can respond to a basic writing prompt according to their ability. Show a picture, play a piece of music or a short clip from a movie or TV show and let them write about it according to their ability.
Conclusion
Every class is multi-level to some extent. Even if they start out at the same level, students learn at different speeds and in different ways. Some will put more effort into the class than others. This is how it works in the real world, too…so let’s prepare our students well to be lifelong learners.
Make Lesson Planning Easy!
Don’t forget to download your free sample lesson from my new book, The Story of Easter. It can help with pre-made lesson plans as you develop a strategy for your multi-level class.
