Structures
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EAL classroom activities, ready to run

You learn a language by speaking it, and in a class of thirty one student speaks at a time. These structures let the whole class talk at once: in pairs, in circles, in groups of four, with short turns and one clear question.

The questions are in simple English for newcomers and English learners: about themselves, about English outside school, about places and things around them.

How a card works

  • Open it without an account. On the start screen you adapt the questions to your own class.
  • Save it with a free account: the preparation goes into My preparations, with your changes. Next time it is there in one click, no searching.
  • With Pro you build a whole lesson from My preparations: several structures in a row, with your instructions and timers.

27 ready-made structures

Cooperative learning for English learners

English learners acquire a language by using it. In a teacher-led lesson, an English learner might speak once a period, if at all; with cooperative structures the whole class talks at the same time. That means more speaking time and less anxiety, because a student first speaks to one classmate instead of to thirty.

Cooperative learning structures give the conversation a predictable shape: a clear question, a short turn and a switch. The routine itself lowers the load, so students can spend their attention on the language and the talk stays in English.

Which structure for which part of the lesson?

As a warm-up, Taking Turns works with simple prompts: name one thing you do every weekend. Everyone says something, and the bar is low enough for a newcomer who is still finding their words.

For more speaking time, Inner & Outer Circle is the strongest structure: students ask the same question to a new partner each round and grow more fluent every time. Interview in Three Rounds adds listening, because students retell what their partner said.

Practice vocabulary and grammar with the Knowledge Quiz, for example on irregular verbs, or with Pair Coach, where students take turns solving a task while their partner checks and coaches.

What to watch for

Keep the questions open and personal, because talking about yourself comes more easily than talking about an abstract topic. Give sentence frames for students at the early levels (I usually..., On weekends I...), and let a student who shares a home language with a classmate plan their answer in it first: the goal is speaking English, and a moment of planning gets them there sooner.

Learning to learn in this subject

Three ways of learning studied in this very subject, each with the structure that makes it happen in class. The board tells the class what it is training.

  • Spaced practice

    Flashcards

    Vocabulary on cards, three short goes a week instead of one long one; wrong goes under.

  • Retrieve from memory

    Movement Quiz

    Quiz each other in changing pairs, card in hand: answer from memory, then turn it over.

  • Solve aloud with feedback

    Pair Coach

    Put a sentence into the right tense, aloud and step by step; the coach asks on, never gives the answer.

Keyword mnemonics work briefly for concrete words and rate low overall; retrieval with spacing wins.

Sources: Dunlosky et al. (2013), distributed practice · Dunlosky et al. (2013), practice testing · Chi et al. (1989), self-explanation while solving

All ways of learning, with sources →

Other subjects

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