Ask An Access Teacher: Teaching in a Mixed Ability Classroom

So this question is very difficult to answer. A class with mixed abilities is already a problem.

So here the teacher should be well equipped to deal with multilevel classes. Let me give you an example: When you have a text, for example, of a reading and you want to ask comprehension questions.

So for example we have, “Tony is seventeen years old.” You can ask this question in different ways. You can use, for example, true-false statements. You can use completed sentences. You can use WH [Who, What, When, Where etc] questions. So according to the level.

So for the lower levels you will just give them true-false statements. Or for the middle group, for example, you can ask them true-false with justification, the third group you can ask WH questions. So it is up to the teacher and I want teachers not to stop or to wait for the other people to spoon feed them.

They should look for their own self-development, auto-development, auto-formation, auto-training. Their formation training is everywhere. You have, today we talk about MOOCS, Massive Open Online Courses. They should be part of that. We should learn because the way I was taught thirty years ago is no longer feasible, it’s no longer appropriate. Again, multicultural. Multicultural.

How are we going to do that? It’s a very, it’s a very complicated question, it’s not easy to answer. But I am sure that every teacher should be able to find solutions that are appropriate to his own surrounding.