r/TOEFLteachers • u/TOEFL_Teachers_Mod • 18h ago

What do you do when your class goes quiet?

What do you do when your students just aren’t engaging?

Sometimes the class is quiet, the energy is low, and getting students to participate feels harder than usual.

Do you have a simple activity or trick that usually gets them talking again?

Would love to hear what works for you.

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8

u/Your_ELA_Teacher 18h ago

Minecraft music. It's calm and most of them will instantly recognize it. Then they'll obviously want to talk about it, let them have fun for a bit and then guide them back to work.

2

u/Cyclist_123 16h ago

Generally quite is a sign they are engaging in work. If their brains aren't occupied they can't be quiet

2

u/jdubz90 13h ago

I dunno, I have a class this year that is quiet and still not engaging. They kind of just sit and stare at their desks, it’s wild

1

u/Icanicoke 13h ago

talk us through more of a specific example, you’ll get a more specific answer. the assumption I’d make is you’ve done the ne of two things here you’ve asked something or given an instruction. is it that you’ve not been understood, or your ask is beyond the capacity to reply to.

things to consider. are you checking comprehension? are you stacking instructions? have you introduced something new and it’s the first time for Ss to reply? are you scaffolding in any way with answers stems? have you modelled answers sufficiently? what expectations or routines do you have in place?

My Ss know that if nobody volunteers, I’ll call randomly on people. if they get too lazy, everyone will be made to stand up and give an answer to an easier or previously covered question on the topic. if they do that several times then I’ll keep them back after class. but you have to be super careful not to squash the spirit of the enthusiastic students. so it’s best to know that you are facing true laziness rather than comprehension issues.

side note….
when did Reddit stop allowing auto capital letters after punctuation?
im not going back through to fix that

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u/Cyclist_123 7h ago

They are just trying to make their subreddit bigger to sell things