Why lessons that look good on paper often collapse in practice; how sequencing, not student ability, is usually the missing piece.
The familiar classroom moment
Have you ever planned a task that you hoped would give learners more agency, only to find five minutes in that it had become heavily teacher dependent?
You intervene once, then again. A clarification here, a prompt there. Before long, you are doing most of the thinking yourself. The task hasn’t ‘failed’ exactly, but it isn’t doing the learning work you expected either. Whatever autonomy you had hoped for has quietly collapsed. Most . . .
---------------------------
This content is available to Modern English Teacher subscribers. If you have a subscription, please log in below, or start your subscription today.
---------------------------
