9 Helpful Tips for Teaching Online ESL Group Classes

Are you interested in teaching ESL to group classes online?

Group classes definitely come with their own set of challenges much different to teaching one on one.

Yet!

They can be a lot more fun with the right strategies

AND

You can make a lot more per hour without charging each family as much for the class.

Let’s jump into 9 of the tips that I have seen make a big difference!

The Background of These Group Class Tips

So, this is what happened…

I was living in Taiwan–a small island nation off the coast of China not to be confused with Thailand–with my wife and son.

Just after Chinese New Year in 2021, the Taiwanese government delayed the start of the regular school semester for two weeks due to the Covid coronavirus epidemic.

I’ll wait for you to finish groaning…

Our son’s school decided to have all their classes online for those two weeks.

A few days later, our second-grader was sitting at our kitchen table with paper, pencils, textbooks, an iPad and headphones in his ears…going to school with a group of 15 other students.

As for me…I got front row seats to the event without having to do any of the teaching. It was a very interesting experience.

I took notes.

It’s a lot easier to see where improvements should be made when you’re watching someone else teach. 😅

Now, to be clear, my son is not an EL; He is a CL (Chinese Learner). His schooling is entirely in Chinese. Many of the difficulties he faced are, of course, similar to those English learners face in the U.S. and other native speaking environments.

Online Teaching Strategies That Worked Well

1. Give students question sticks to hold up when they had a question. The school asked all of the students to decorate them so that they were unique and our son created one out of a popsicle stick with a Japanese Sumikko Gurashi stuck on it. If you don’t know what Sumikko Gurashi are, it’s worth a Google.
2. Classes took place on the Zoom app which worked quite well due to some of the wonderful tools that Zoom includes. Using the app, students could be given permission by the teacher to become a presenter, which carried a weighty significance for the students. When the teacher asked groups to prepare something to be presented to the class, most of the students took to the task with professional seriousness. There are also draw tools included so that the teacher could ask all of the students to write or draw on their screens. Zoom lets you break off into small groups (see below). You can mute certain students if they are being disruptive. Zoom has so many tools that make teaching group classes a lot easier.
3. Students met in small break-out groups by joining separate break-out rooms. This had a big, unexpected benefit. Because students were limited to the screen, they quickly discovered that they had to rely much more heavily on their verbal language than they were used to. Their non-verbal language didn’t carry across very well. That meant that students were constantly misunderstanding each other, often getting frustrated and then rethinking how they could rephrase what they needed to say so that it was clearer. Having students in small groups meant that all of the students were able to participate rather than just sitting around waiting.
4. Take lots of pictures. Get students taking pictures of everything they do. Want to have students draw or write or find an object in their house? Give them 5 minutes to complete the task and then take a picture to share with the group. Students really enjoy this and benefit from the healthy amount of peer pressure that came from knowing that everyone could see their work.
5. Students were provided a printable schedule and other printable resources. Even though you’re teaching online, printed resources are still incredibly helpful for getting groups of students organized. The printable schedule listed class times, links, the teacher’s email address and more. Students printed them off and hung them on the wall near their computers. Our son had to keep track of the times he had class and be online 10 minutes beforehand which was great for his time management skills. This was obviously a problem for some students who were notoriously unavailable when class began. 
6. Use a Learning Management System like Seesaw to manage homework because it is so much easier to sort by class or student to see who has or has not turned in completed work. Students can record themselves summarizing a topic they learned about after watching a video or record themselves reading a text out loud. Theses types of software help enormously with keeping homework with group classes organized and getting students practicing with content outside of class.
7. Pre-film the most important parts of a day’s instruction, so that students can watch it in advance and the group class time can focus more on practicing.This also means that if students have poor connections, they still have a place to go to learn what they need to for the lesson.
8. Play the Amazing Race Game with a set of tasks to complete where small groups of students only get the next task once they have completed a previous task fully. There could be different options for how to complete a task so that students had some choice in how to proceed. It would be a little like setting up stations, but with the added motivation of trying to complete all assignments before other teams. With my son’s experience, the small groups of students working together on an assignment really gave them a sense of independence and responsibility.
9. Make expectations about teacher availability very clear and then turn off notifications after hours so that you do not burn yourself with always being on call with your students any time they want to text you and ask a question.

Things That Made the Teacher Look Like She Wanted to Pull Out Her Hair

1. Students’ Internet connections were spotty at times. After the teacher would finish giving some instructions, a student or two would inevitably say that the audio had cut out. The teacher would repeat herself only to have another student say that her audio had cut out as well. In our son’s case, the audio legitimately cut out at times and it was difficult to understand what the teacher was saying. There were other times, when you wondered whether students who had gotten distracted were simply using the audio cutting out as an excuse to ask the teacher to repeat herself. Regardless, you could see the muscles in her face start to twitch after about the third or fourth time she had to repeat herself.
2. The little question sticks worked until students began to abuse them, waving them frantically at the screen before the teacher had an opportunity to finish what she wanted to say. As in class, students’ questions will often be answered if they wait for the teacher to finish. In class though, you can usually signal to the students that they need to wait without interrupting what you are saying. Online, it is quite difficult to get them to stop waving the sticks. 
3. Students who hadn’t turned in their work were hard to pin down. They made excuses, complained about Internet connectivity, and uploaded partial work in multiple places, I assume, for the purpose of causing the teacher’s hair to turn gray more quickly.
4. The students would often call each other, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. There were a couple of times when some students were in one chat and others were in another chat and the teacher had to go around trying to gather them all into the same place. This was made more difficult once students began calling each other to chat in between classes. 
5. Teachers ended up being pulled into chats long after they should have gotten off work and gone home to take care of their own kids, or space out in front of the TV with a bag of Doritos.

Links to Apps

• Zoom – This was the most heavily used app and, being free, it is pretty impressive what you can do with it. You can have group video where you can see the teacher as well as the other students. The teacher as well as students can share their screens. There is a whiteboard you can use for illustrating what you want to say, although without some practice, the illustrations come out looking a little like a piece of toddler wall art.
• Seesaw – I think Seesaw would have been perfect for students to complete assignments.

What tips do you have for teaching group classes? Leave a comment below!