STARTING LESSONS WELL
EAL and Multilingualism Coordinator, Barbara Stoecker continues her series of articles in which she suggests using good EAL teaching techniques are relevant to all of us.
GOOD FOR EAL, GOOD FOR ALL
In a previous article, I shared my realisation about how important it is to encourage all our students to talk more in lessons. This is because all students, regardless of language proficiency, benefit from verbal consolidation or exploratory talk. It’s a basic EAL strategy, but in fact by making EAL strategies—like using sentence stems, word banks, and guiding questions—available to everyone, we make our job easier and even reduce the need for differentiated sheets and tasks. More importantly, these techniques can help all students learn more effectively – across the whole curriculum – as they learn to express their ideas with confidence.
BEGINNING A LESSON
This time, I want to tackle the ‘elephant in the room’ for many of us: when students just don’t get what they need to do at the beginning of a lesson, even one that has been painstakingly planned and carefully explained.
Picture this: I’m well-prepared, I know the lesson objectives, I know exactly what activities I want students to do and have even included some fun with a video and a mini-whiteboard task. I start with a warm-up:
“Think of the best holiday destination and describe it using 3 adjectives we learned last lesson. Write 3 full sentences. You have 5 minutes for this.”
Take 10 seconds to imagine what happens next… 10…9…8… Well? Depending on your experience, you might see a quiet, engaged class, bored teens taking three minutes to take out their books, or students scanning the room for a clue. Often, it’s a mix of all three—something I experienced countless times in my first year of teaching.
I could not comprehend why, after such careful planning, the outcome of my instructions varied so much. Of course, many external factors influence this, but what I could control was what to do about it.
Teaching English in a secondary school wasn’t what I expected. I often thought, “The kids don’t seem to get what I’m saying,” Of course, I wondered whether it was because of my Polish-French accent. Wondering alone wouldn’t get me far though. And then, in a lightbulb moment, I remembered my early days training for a Trinity TESOL Certificate and teaching adults EAL in London. Yes, it’s true what they say – these ‘lightbulb moments’ really do exist, I had just experienced it: I needed my “ICQs and CCQs!”
Instruction and conceot checking
Using Instruction-Checking Questions (‘ICQs’) and Concept-Checking Questions (‘CCQs’) turned out to be not just a useful teaching technique but also an effective behaviour management tool.
The idea is simple: ICQs are short, often closed questions asked immediately after giving a set of instructions. CCQs follow the introduction of a new or reviewed term. For example:
“Think of the best holiday destination and describe it using 3 adjectives we learned last lesson. Write 3 full sentences, you have 5 minutes for this.”
- Jason, how long do you have for this task?
- Sarah, how many sentences do you have to write?
- Samir, what do you have to include in your sentences?
- Daisy, what are you describing?
You might think, “It’s patronising” or “it kills the pace.” Try it first, persist for a series of lessons, and students will get used to hearing and answering them. For me, instead of being controlling, it became a way for students to gain points for answering correctly. Instead of being bored, some started predicting what questions would come. Instead of slowing the lesson down, ICQs wake up sleepy brains!
CCQs require more planning. Science teachers can explain “gravity” or “combustion” in their sleep, but low-literacy or EAL students need more time to understand. This is true of first language users too. Take this example when introducing the idea of gravity:
“Gravity is the force that pulls things down toward the Earth. It’s the reason why we stay on the ground and don’t float away – got it?”
Just replace the “got it” with:
- Sarah, if I drop a pen, will it float or fall?
- Luke, does it mean gravity operates in this classroom?
- Jamie, does gravity push things away from the Earth, or pull them toward the Earth?
- Omar, is gravity the reason why we stay on the ground and don’t float away?
This technique works because, as research shows, “Instructional clarity plays a central role . . . as it fosters students’ persistence in learning, eases cognitive load, enabling more efficient information processing, and strengthens their academic motivation.” (Oschwald et al., 2025)
It may seem basic or too good to be true, but you won’t know until you try. CCQs help students internalise concepts, support engagement, and clarify instructions in a way verbal explanation alone often cannot.
I’ll leave you to try it out for yourself! ‘Combustion’, anyone?
Barbara Stoecker is EAL and Multilingualism Coordinator at Claremont School in the UK
FEATURE IMAGE: by Lorna Williamson For Unsplash+
Support Images: by Viyanca For Unsplash+ & Graficon Stuff For Unsplash+
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