Attention spans are short these days. Long instructions. Too much theory. Explaining before doing it. Too many steps for an activity.   These, as well as many other situations, can lead students to tune out. With younger students, this can lead to behaviour problems. With older students, it can lead to boredom and simply not listening. As teachers, what can we do? – Work backwards What do you expect your students to do at the end of the lesson? Start with that. For example, I want my students to act out a dialogue based on a grammar exercise. Knowing this helps me set up the activities in the lesson.

– Think of the steps What do your students need from you to be able to act out the dialogue? Break it down into easy steps.

1. Confirm the beginning. Make sure everyone has done the basics, in this case, the grammar exercise. It will be the beginning of their dialogue. If there’s a problem at this point, it will affect the rest of the lesson.

2. Model the dialogue. Show students what you expect. You can have a sample dialogue for them to read. You can guide them to write a dialogue as a class. They can listen to a dialogue. The aim here is that students see what they are expected to do.

3. Start slow Have students write only two lines of a dialogue. Example: Student A: The weather was really nice. Student B: Yes, it was.

Student A is simply using the sentence from the grammar exercise. Student B is responding. Short, simple, and easy for everyone to understand. By giving each pair a sentence from the grammar exercise, they know to add one more line. 4. Extend it. Now that students understand what is expected of them, you can challenge them a bit more. Ask them to add two to four more lines to their dialogue. Notice that they are building on the work they have already done – the repetition of the grammar will help them remember it. 5. Personalise it. Ask them to make their dialogue true about them. They begin with the same sentence from the grammar exercise. They follow the same structure of the dialogue they have written, but now they are sharing real information about themselves. Their final dialogue, about six to eight lines, will be similar to the dialogue you showed them at the beginning of the lesson.   For me, the most important aspect of this lesson is that students build their dialogue step by step, allowing the teacher to assist those who need help. When a student falls behind and struggles to think of a line to write, the teacher can intervene. When a student finds it easy, the teacher steps in and challenges them with the next step. For the complete activity, go to My Resources – https://learningnaturally.co.uk/my-resources/