The arithmetic of a class of 40 is brutal. If you call on children one at a time, a 50 minute lesson gives each of them under a minute of speaking and 39 minutes of sitting and waiting. Speaking practice in a big class has to stop working like a stage, with one performer and thirty nine spectators, and start working like an orchestra, where every instrument plays at once.
4 formats that get the whole class talking
- Whole class chorus work (Choral): the most basic format and the most underrated. Shy children get to move their mouths somewhere safe. Use it to open every new sentence frame.
- Half the class asks, half answers: the left side asks What is this? and the right side answers It is a cat. Then swap, and everyone has played both roles in two minutes.
- Row against row: children speak in order down the row and the first row to finish wins. There's enough pressure to keep everyone sharp, but it's spread across the whole row instead of landing on one child.
- Pair work: the king of speaking practice. Forty children means twenty conversations running at the same time. You walk the room and listen, and you can see exactly who is stuck and where.
Rules that stop pair work turning into a chat
Give them a script they can genuinely finish in two minutes, an example on the board, and something to hand in at the end. When a pair has finished practising, have each of them write one line recording their partner's answer. That small slip of paper changes the mood from killing time to finishing a job, and it shows you afterwards which pairs drifted.
Save the real stage for the end of the lesson and take two or three volunteer pairs. The children who are ready get to perform, the ones who aren't get a model to watch, and nobody is dragged up in front of the class before they've rehearsed.