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Get your students to sign up in teams of two or three, then have them organize an activity for the class to do in the second half of class. Basically, they teach the class for an hour with your support. This is not a presentation. It has to be something that actively involves all the people in the class. The question is: "What is the class going to do?" Games, role-plays, discussions, drama activities all work well. There are lots more ideas in Drama Techniques in Language Learning (Maley & Duff, Cambridge, 1982).

Isn't our eventual aim is teach students to teach themselves - to direct their own learning? This gives them the chance to really see how teachers feel and understand the factors which we consider when we're teaching.

Having students in the teacher's role encourages students to cooperate and to use cooperation-language. Student's are sometimes hesitant to point out problems, suggest other ways of doing things, or to ask us to clarify instructions. But when they're working with other students, you'll often hear this language come out in a way you've never heard before. "How should we start?" "Should we do it like this, or like this?" "Why don't we make three teams instead of two?"  

Students get a chance to show you the kinds of activities they enjoy. I've stolen (...er.. copied... er... adapted...) some great teaching ideas from my students' Group Led Activities. It also encourages students to think about what kinds of exercises help them learn best. Are you a role-play person, or a discussion person, or a partner exercise person, or...?

I like to use a story-completion game where the students listen to a story, make up an ending, and then act it out in groups.

Make sure your students know that you will support them and fix their activity if it doesn't work. The students are responsible for the basic idea. You help them put it together and make it work. I've found that some groups want a lot of advice and others are happier being left to themselves. By the end of the term, I've had students fixing my activities!

Do a brainstorming and planning session in small groups during the first week to get them thinking. The basic question they have to answer is "What is the class going to do?" You can ask questions like: What are you interested in? OK, what can we do with it? A role-play? Who are the characters and what's their problem? A discussion? What's the topic? What questions do you want the class to discuss? A game? What kind of game? What are the rules? How are you going to set it up?

Have all the students sign up as quickly as possible, then copy the list and hand it out to all the students. That way it's clear that everyone is going to do this. Pinning up the sign-up sheet in the class room makes it easy for people to see which groups are signed up for which weeks, and who to ask if they want to switch weeks. I ran a Group Led Activity every week for more than a year in an intermediate class, and I only ever had one no-show. On that occasion, the team was unprepared, so they did their activity in the next class.

Choose two or three good students and sign them up for the first week yourself. Otherwise, you can bet your life that nobody is going to volunteer to go first. Would you?!?

Thanks to Mr. Mark Schwedersky for teaching me the Group Led Activity in 1993 in Taejon, South Korea.

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