Large groups techniques

Dictogloss
A wonderful technique that really lends itself well to large classes, especially when there is limited movement because of layout issues. Pick a short text (perhaps a paragraph from oneof the Topical News lessons section). Ask your students to close their notebooks and put down their pens. Explain that you will read a text and you want them to listen carefully.
Read the text andthen ask students to write down everything they can remember. Put students in pairs or small groups and ask them to share ideas and try and reconstruct the text. If you want you can read it out again,but make sure students aren’t writing while you are dictating. You could also write up a series of questions on the board (these could be the comprehension questions) and tell students that the answersto the questions will help them reconstruct the text.
Using an anecdote
Choose one of the anecdotes from the Teacher Anecdotes section and tell your students you are going to read out a short storythat happened to someone. You might want to take the opportunity to turn this into a prediction activity. You could read out a few lines and then ask students to talk in pairs or small groups andpredict what happened next. Then continue the story and watch a few of your students to see who got it right – you’ll easily be able to tell from their reaction.
You could also turn it into a vocabularyprediction activity. Read a part of the story and then stop. Ask students to write down the next word. Again, get them to compare with a partner before continuing with the story. Both of these ideasgive students an extra reason to listen and will help them focus. Of course, as a follow-up you could ask students to work in small groups and share their own anecdotes around a certain topic.
Jigsawtexts
Another technique is to take a longer text and make 30 copies. You could use the material in the Reading Skills section. Cut the text into five sections (A-E). Put your students into groups...