Give children a signal they’ve rehearsed, a short turn with a clear job and a way to show you what they understood. Let groups keep talking while children can hear the person next to them and take their turns. If several groups start talking over each other, pause, model the volume and restart the same turn.
By Gav & Em, How to English TEFL Podcast
How do you set up a room for 32 children?
The large-class guide uses an individual first try, rotating roles and a final check. For 8- to 10-year-olds, keep that sequence and make the roles visible. In the example below, 32 children work in eight groups of four. Number the groups on a quick seating sketch. Put one envelope of materials at each group before class. In fixed rows, use two neighbouring pairs, one behind the other. Let them turn to face their group when they can and leave the aisle clear.
With 30 children, use six groups of four and two groups of three. In a trio, the checker also passes the role cards. With more children, add groups and rotate which ones you listen to across lessons.
Which signal works when the room is already noisy?
Before handing out the envelopes, show a raised hand and a card that says PAUSE. Say ‘Pause’ at an ordinary volume. Model the response: finish the word, stop talking and put the card down. Practise once while the room is quiet and once with a few seconds of partner talk. Restart with ‘Same turn. Partner voice. Go.’ Use the spoken and visual cues together, and make sure children who may miss either cue know how they’ll receive it.
Try this in your next lesson · Picture detectives
Ages 8–10 · A1 · About 12 minutes · 32 learners. Children use in, under and next to to tell someone where a toy is. For each group, draw a box on a sheet, cut out a small toy token and make four clue cards. Draw the same toy in, under or beside the box on each card. One position can appear twice. Put the three phrases on the board with a sketch for each.
- Set up and model · 3 minutes. Show how one child keeps their clue private and says, ‘The toy is under the box.’ The listener puts the token below the box. Reveal the clue and compare. Check the instruction with ‘Who sees the clue first?’ and ‘When do we show it?’ Then let every child look at their own clue and quietly rehearse the sentence.
- Run four short turns · 5 minutes. Give out four role cards: speaker describes their clue, listener places the toy, checker asks ‘Same?’ once the clue is revealed, turn keeper passes the role cards clockwise after the check. Each child gets one speaking turn and one listening turn. Trios stop after three turns. A child can point to the phrase they need and rehearse it with a partner before giving the clue.
- Listen across the room while they play. Visit one group at the front, one in the middle and two towards the back, on different sides. At each stop, watch one complete turn. Mark who gave the clue, whether the listener placed the toy where the speaker meant, and whether a prompt helped. Start with the other four groups in the next round or lesson.
- Check every child · 4 minutes. Pause the groups. Draw two new pictures, A with a pencil under a book and B with a pencil next to it. Say ‘The pencil is next to the book.’ Have each child mark A or B privately, then show their answer at the same time. Scan front, middle and back. Repeat with a fresh pair of pictures if a section of the room struggled. The picture check tells you what each child understood. Your group notes tell you whose spoken English you heard.
What do you do with what you notice?
- One group gets loud. Move closer and remind them that the clue is for the listener beside them. Check the next turn before interrupting the rest of the class.
- Several groups miss the clue. Use the pause signal, model the line in a voice one partner can hear, then restart the same turn. Return to two of those groups and see whether the listener can place the toy without repeated requests.
- The same children keep answering. Put the role cards back in order and give the next speaker time to rehearse. Watch whether they get to give the clue themselves.
- Several children in one area pick A. Check whether they could see the drawings and hear the sentence. Model the difference between under and next to, then check with a fresh example. Follow up separately with children whose answers you couldn’t see.
Hear Gav and Em on trying to talk over a class
In S01E45, Em remembers trying to get learners’ attention by raising her voice and explains why that made the room louder. Gav asks about advice she was given for a first lesson with children. The picture activity above is a separate, worked example for a primary class.
Read the video transcript
And all I was doing is just shouting at the top of my voice the whole time, listen to me, that never works. I think any teacher will tell you that with kids, that it’s never going to work. That’s just going to make the noise levels higher. Did you mention that before you said that somebody gave you a tip when you’re teaching kids to go in tough, go in hard on the first lesson? Yeah, that was terrible advice, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Hear the full discussion in the S01E45 episode guide. For a reset you can use during pair work, see How Can You Manage Classroom Noise Without Stopping Useful Talk?.