Teaching students with a range of language abilities can be a challenge. If you teach at a lower level, more advanced students may become frustrated and bored without learning anything new. If you teach at a more advanced level, the lower-level students will have difficulty keeping up. There are a few strategies to multilevel classrooms; the teacher needs to plan in such a way that every student feels he is learning and moving forward.

Multilevel Activities
Many, if not most, activities can be adjusted to work at several levels. For example, you can plan a reading of a text with subsequent questions involving both straightforward topics to more difficult subject matter. When you ask the class such questions, everybody has a chance to answer one they find challenging but not impossible.

Two Level Lessons
Grammar and vocabulary topics can be taught at different levels. In fact, any language learner will encounter the same topics, for example, the present continuous verb tense, at multiple points during their courses. Use this to your advantage. The introduction to your class should consist of the most basic aspect of grammar, followed by enough group activities to keep everybody occupied for the rest of the lesson. Once the more advanced students have completed an introductory activity with everybody else, which for them is a review, ask them to sit at another table and take them through more challenging aspects of the same topic. With the present continuous tense, this may be a look at stative verb rules, present continuous for the future, or conditionals, while the lower levels move on to more practice of the basics.

Mixed Groups
For speaking activities, mix the levels up. In each group of 4-5 students, include a couple of lower-level students and a couple of higher-level students. (It is not necessary to inform the students you are grouping them in this manner, especially if some are sensitive about their language skills; simply make it appear a random regrouping.) Move around the groups, helping and correcting. Target the corrections to the students -- you are listening for basic errors with the lower-level students and more subtle mistakes with the higher levels.

Recruit Students
Get students to explain topics to each other. In this way, the students have the opportunity to stretch themselves, and learn from each other. One of the best ways to consolidate your understanding of a topic is to teach it to somebody else. Divide students into similar-level pairs and ask each pair to explain a topic they have already learned to another pair. Simply ensure that each pair fully understands the topic, so pick something appropriate for each level.