Every student is unique, and fostering inclusive learning environments and classroom practices ensures that all students have the opportunity to learn and actively participate. While teachers play an important role in creating these environments, learners themselves also contribute. By expanding their knowledge and developing skills and attitudes related to inclusivity and diversity, learners can help shape a truly inclusive classroom.
Many of the skills that learners can develop to support inclusive environments overlap with skills in the Cambridge Life Competencies framework. Social-emotional learning (SEL), for example, has been shown to increase inclusion and belonging (e.g. Cipriano et al., 2023). Many SEL related skills are included in the Collaboration and Emotional Development competencies of the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework, but important skills for inclusion can also be found in other competencies too.
In this post, we look at six activities from the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework Activity Cards that can help increase inclusion and belonging in the English language classroom.
Six activities for developing Life Competencies and supporting inclusion
| CREATIVE THINKING | Preparing for creativity | Considering multiple perspectives |
PLAYING DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
(Young learners / Teenage learners)
Considering multiple perspectives is a key component of Creative Thinking but also helps learners empathise with others and gain a deeper understanding of different people’s experiences. This supports inclusion by helping to ensure that everyone feels heard and respected. When discussing concepts and ideas with learners, encourage them to consider other perspectives by asking ‘What might be the arguments against this idea?’
| COMMUNICATION | Facilitating interactions | Using communication strategies to facilitate conversations |
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
(Young learners / Teenage learners)
Developing diverse strategies to facilitate conversations can create a more inclusive environment by helping to ensure everyone has a voice and building a more respectful and balanced environment. When discussing a story or topic with learners in open class, encourage learners to follow their own contribution by nominating another classmate to share their ideas (e.g. “I think…, What do you think, Jasmin?”)
| COLLABORATION | Encouraging effective group interaction | Establishing ways of working together |
WORKING TOGETHER
(Teenage learners/Adult learners)
Establishing ways of working together helps to create a sense of belonging by ensuring that no one is left out. This helps learners value different opinions and work with diverse peers. After giving instructions for a collaborative coursebook task, ask learners to use the prompts below to plan and explain how they will work together on the task:
- To complete the task, we need to …
- We will do this by …
- We will work together by…
- We might need to help and support each other with …
| SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES | Showing intercultural awareness | Understanding aspects of own and others’ cultures |
IS THIS THE SAME…?
(Young learners / Teenage learners)
Understanding their own culture helps learners to develop an awareness of how their own experiences shape their views, enabling them to appreciate and respect similarities and differences between cultures. This encourages more thoughtful and inclusive interactions with classmates from diverse backgrounds. When learners encounter different situations in coursebooks (e.g. in stories), ask groups to discuss the following questions:
- Is this the same in your house / street / school / town?
- Is this the same in France / Japan / America (etc.)?
| EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT | Empathy and relationship skills | Showing empathy for the feelings of others |
EMPATHY MAP
(Teenage learners / Adult learners)
“It is impossible to create an inclusive environment without developing a sense of empathy” (Goldstein, 2025). Developing learners’ empathy and relationship skills helps to create a classroom culture in which all learners feel seen, heard and included. Understanding others’ feelings and experiences makes it easier for learners to accept and value differences and encourages kindness and support. Help learners develop and practise empathy and relationship skills when they listen to an audio recording, read a text or watch a video. Ask them to choose one character from the text and complete the empathy map framework below, making notes about what the character said, what they did, what they thought, and how they felt.
| DIGITAL LITERACY | Sharing and interacting online | Connecting and interacting with others using appropriate technology |
PLATFORM BRAINSTORM
(Teenage learners / Adult learners)
The right technology can help facilitate a more accessible, respectful, and inclusive environment, allowing everyone to contribute and connect. Understanding of the affordances and challenges of using technology to communicate with others who may have different needs to themselves encourages learners to make more thoughtful and empathic choices about the technology they use with others.
Elicit from learners some different types of digital communication platforms (e.g. messenger, email, social media, Zoom). After learners have listened to a conversation or dialogue in the coursebook, ask them to decide via which platform it would be most appropriate for the characters to communicate. Encourage learners to consider the context, content, and relationship between the characters. Next, ask learners to rewrite the dialogue for a different platform, and to consider how the language and register might change.
The goal of inclusive education is for all learners to reach their full potential (Naraian, 2019). This is about more than just providing access to education – it’s about enabling meaningful participation and ongoing progress. Every learner is different, and these individual differences are a source of diversity, which can enrich the lives and learning of others (Hockings, 2010). Helping learners build their understanding of diversity and inclusion enables them to contribute to creating a genuinely inclusive classroom environment.
