Hi meggy,
For conversational lessons when I started out I used to pick an article from Yahoo, always an interesting one (I think it's Odd News or something like that) and copied that into Word. I then edited it out depending on the level of the class and underlined certain words that I would want them to learn in the class. Of course you could always get a topical talking book where your class can have discussions in the class but it helped me a lot when I started off to pick my own articles and edit them. My class was an intermediate class so they couldn't just read an article and talk about it, I had to ask them questions and give them time to form their own opinions in their head. After doing this a few times I got a real feel for it and really enjoyed doing them.
It's just an idea that you might want to try. Also you can set your students into pairs and assign them some questions which they can answer together. Proved a good hit in my earlier classes (before I had books
)
Best of luck and let us know how you get on