listen to the story

from a childrens' picture book to a article in the newspaper
Read the class a story appropriate to their level of english, (To reduce teacher talking time have a student read the story) after the story give them a copy of the story (easy enough to photocopy a short story), have the story read again but this time have the students highlight words they don't know and underline sentences they don't understand. This is a great opportunity to pair up the students for a minute or 2 and see how many words they can teach each other and then possibly pair them up again with a new partner. Then have them look up the remainder of the words for homework, and submit to the teacher anonymously the sentences they don't understand to be gone over the next class (students are much more likely to admit they don't understand something if it can be left anonymous.) For high level english students (such as university or a honors program) I would chose a story with something controversial or something being debated and then divide the class in 2 or if its a small class make it a class wide discussion of the topic.