This posting includes sample lessons that give students a lot of autonomy.*
This posting is discussed on my YouTube video ESL Writing Workshop Approach
The most important ingredient for motivating students is autonomy. 1 The sense of being autonomous can produce a very positive effect on students’ attitude, focus and their performance. Best of all, it’s very effective and quite easy to include this in ESL classes.
Having autonomy doesn’t mean that students decide what is taught in a lesson. Instead, students can experience autonomy if the lesson is set up so that they can individually choose which exercise to do first, second etc., how fast to work, when to ask the teacher a question or for help and even when to take a break.
A lesson plan template that gives students autonomy (Writing Workshop)
Teachers can organize their lesson in a Writing Workshop using many different types of materials, but it works best when using inductive exercises. That is because inductive exercises require little or no time taken up with teacher lectures.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 