Teaching secondary
school aged students

Pace

What and Why?

The timing and pace of any lesson are linked together. Timing is concerned with the management of the time available for each class, that is, when certain things happen. Pace is more concerned with the rate at which the students work. All students work at a different pace and they thus need to be allowed to work at a rate at which they feel comfortable. CES provides a number of ways of preventing some students from falling behind because the pace is too fast and of preventing others from getting bored because the pace of the lessons is too slow. Different types of classroom activities will naturally have a different pace. For example, oral discussion with the whole class may be experienced as 'faster' than individual writing. Pairwork may be experienced as more relaxed than teacher's questions and answers. These differences in pace can be used to give variety to the shape of the lesson and thus sustain interest.

Practical ideas

• In large mixed ability classes, different students can work on different tasks at the same time at their own pace
• For most of the exercises, except the initial brainstorming and overviewing ones, students can work at their own pace (see monitoring and guiding)
• Certain parts of the course will allow students more opportunity to have direct control over their learning and thus their pace: the time to spare sections, the exercise box, the decide exercises, the do it yourself exercises and the use of groupwork and pairwork.
• If certain students are working at a very slow pace, you will need to ask yourself why this is and if you can or should do anything about it. For example, they may be tired, they may be confused, they may not understand the task, they may be bored, they may have things on their mind. You will then need to decide if you should intervene for example by encouraging them to work faster or by explaining things to them again.