Going With the Flow in The ESL Classroom

Keeping pace in teaching ESL students

Keeping pace during your ESL lesson is an art that takes both practice and experience. Ever been in a classroom or workshop where the time seemed to drip slowly like molasses? What about a completely opposite experience – you didn’t even look at the clock and boom – it was done and you felt like you’ve actually learned something!

Welcome to keeping a good pace throughout your ESL lesson. It is that sweet spot between too much and too little, too long and too short, too fast and too slow, well, you get the picture.

In this blog post, I will share seven things you can do to keep pace in your ESL classroom. I will also provide tips on how to keep pace in a multi-level ESL classroom as well as in one-on-one teaching situations.

Pacing tip #1: Plan out your lesson thoroughly

I already talked about the importance of planning in another post. And that is just that – when you are ready and know what comes next within a second, you won’t skip a beat, keep pace and the lesson will flow smoothly.

Planning involves having clear and specific goals. Think about the following questions to guide you:

How much time do you have? What can you achieve in that time?

What will your students learn and leave the classroom knowing in terms of language?
Will it be a grammar point, or vocabulary usage, or spelling?
What will your students learn and leave the classroom knowing in terms of content?
How will they be able to “marry” the language and content?
Will all the students be learning the same material?
If it is a multi-level classroom learning the same material, how can you adapt the information for beginners and intermediate levels?
If you are to support ESL students on their content and they are working on different assignments, how will you divide your time and activities?

Remember, all activities must relate to the objective. It is very common to “teach on the fly” as they say, create and add things as we go. While “thinking on your feet” is great, it is also important to know that these are the moments when time slips away from us. Therefore, sticking to a plan might be more beneficial for both you and your students.

Pacing tip #2: Timeframe

Think about how much time you have with your students. Then break it down by looking at your goals. I usually inform the students at the beginning of the class of what we are doing that day and how long we will spend on each of the activities. Write your goal on the board for them to see and tell them how much time you intend to spend on each of the activities. Once you say it out loud, it registers not only for them but also for you and this clarity helps you move along and stay accountable.

Pacing tip #3: Move around

Students tend to get disengaged easily when they are bored (scrolling down social media much?). Feeling the pulse of the classroom is essential for keeping a good pace. Do you remember yourself as a student, sitting in a long lecture delivered by a teacher who was sitting behind his/her desk the entire class? If so, I’m willing to bet you that the only impression and memory their lessons left on you was them sitting at their desk for a long time. I know I could tell a few stories about that…

Now picture a teacher who is on his/her feet, walking around, pointing to the board, map, etc., using gestures, making eye connection with their students, maybe even demonstrating emotions of the literary characters. That seems like a livelier setup and believe me, it does make a difference. The connection is key and students feel it when you are in it!

Pacing tip #4: Read the room

Another instance of students disengaging is when we talk a lot. Teachers tend to talk a lot when the students are at a lower level of English proficiency. I get it, the silence is sometimes too much to bear and we tend to chime in with a “suggested answer”, a choice for them to pick, etc.

It is important though to ask the students for a response in whatever you are doing. Better yet, require it. Once you establish a precedent that a response is required in your classroom – whatever form it may take – and practice it, the students will know what to expect. Yes, they may feel uncomfortable at first, but a little bit of discomfort in learning and practice is putting them at the zone of proximal development.

When you see that students are starting to tune out, change it up a bit. Here are a few ways you can do it:

Have a few different activities ready that would achieve the same goal
Do your presentation in a few different modes
Change up the grouping of your students
Give examples, but limit yourself to three or four

Finally, when you check in for understanding, Do NOT ask the infamous non-effective question “Do you understand?” The answer will always be “yes” or an affirmative nod of the head. Here are a few questions you can ask to check for understanding instead:

ask closed yes/no questions to check for vocabulary, grammar or reading comprehension
show pictures (especially for beginners) and have them call out the word/phrase/sentence structure, etc.
say a word and ask them to act it out
for more intermediate/advanced students, use synonyms/antonyms

Pacing tip #5: Ask for feedback – both from students and other teachers

If you are not sure you are going in the right direction or something just feels off and you don’t know what, you can ask your students or other teachers for feedback.

I find that involving students in their own learning by asking the questions how they learn best, what they think worked in the lesson and what totally went over their heads helps me as a teacher. After all, my goal is for my English learners to learn the language and be able to use it, so I find their feedback important.

You can do it by using a simple exit ticket at the end of the class. Just three questions: what did you learn today; what helped you learn; what in the lesson did you find unnecessary/ineffective can give you very valuable insight.

You may also ask another educator to observe you. I have teachers who are interested in what I do asking me if they could come and observe my classroom all the time. Is it out of my comfort zone? Absolutely! Do I say “no”? Absolutely not. If you remember, in the previous section I mentioned something about slight discomfort and zone of proximal development – that works for us teachers too!

Pacing tip #6: Be ready

This section is closely related to the lesson planning we talked about above. As a teacher, you have to foresee that there may be a situation where some students finish practice activity early while others take longer. Closely monitor the classroom and make sure that those who have finished have something ready to do right away. There should be no downtime.

This also brings us back to moving around in the classroom. As you walk and observe the students, watch and listen for English usage. If you hear students refer back to their native tongue or going on to google translate on their computers, chime in with additional checking questions that would allow to bring them back on track.

Pacing tip #7: Be there

When the students see that you are there fully for them and are ready for not only lesson delivery but also whatever they may need, you will be the necessary motivation for them.

Summing it all up

It takes a lot of practice to keep good pace in the classroom. It depends not only on you but also on the group of the students you have, the time and the set-up of your class.

In general though, here are a few things that I’ve covered in this article and that are important for you to remember when thinking about keeping pace in your ESL classroom:

plan your lesson thoroughly
move around
minimize the time spent on teacher talk
read the room
avoid downtime for students
change-up your presentation
have plenty of activities for your students to be engaged
vary the grouping
divide your time evenly for different groups (in a multi-level classroom)
ask for feedback

More tips

Multi-level ESL classrooms

While sometimes it seems like mission impossible to gauge the flow of your lesson in a multi-level ESL classroom, the above pacing tips work well.

I teach an ESL support class at the high school, where I help my students with the content area work in addition to teaching the language.

The one thing I have found works well is no matter how different the work my students have, they ALL need vocabulary. Therefore, they know that at the beginning of each week, we will start a new 10-word list and at the beginning of each class, for 20 minutes or so (which is an 80-minute class), we will be practicing those words in different contexts. That way, they are able to access their content area classes better.

One-on-one ESL classrooms

When you teach English one-on-one, it is especially important to have a variety of activities to practice the target language. Time tends to go either very fast (which, I think, is a good thing) or very slow (which your students will feel like they don’t know why they are even here). Therefore, having activities that target different modalities – listening, speaking, reading and writing as well as creating – will keep them engaged. As a result, your lesson will flow better.

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