Do you ever find yourself finishing your lessons with a few minutes to spare? Picking out or creating the right material for your lesson plan to fit the time that you were given, is an important skill to master as a teacher. It is evident when you look at experienced teachers: the activities unwind and end perfectly just as the lessons finish. It’s like they can control time! Fret not, we compiled several useful tricks for your teacher toolbox for you to extend some of your lessons so that things can end beautifully, and fall into place just as the alarm sounds.
Grammar Extensions
Towards the end of your grammar lesson, ask your students to write one (or five, depending on your time) grammar question in the style of the one that they are learning. For example if you are learning about adjectives, they can write, “What makes a monster scary?” and they have to answer it by writing descriptive sentences. They can swap these questions with other students and try to answer those too.
Reading
If you have studied a reading assignment but still have some time left on the clock, ask your students to keep reading and tell them that you will read the text aloud – but with five big differences! The rule is that they should listen carefully and spot these changes. Change key facts such as names and events, and for older classes, you can even try changing some expressions and idioms. Let students compare and then revisit the text to check.
Tangrams
Who said games and puzzles aren’t educational? Tangrams are a great way to engage students and get them to work with geometry. Have the students use tangrams to fill an area and ask them what shapes they used on it. More information on Tangrams.
Creating a Quick Quiz
Another fun way for your students to learn is for them to create their own quizzes. As most students love testing their general knowledge, why not let them host and allow them to be the quizmaster?
Crazy Story
This is a fun activity that will make your students be creative and speak in class. Ask your students to write a verb (or whatever your lesson is and would like to review). The teacher will then start to tell the story and stops to choose a student to continue. The student will then use his/her chosen verb in their continuation of the story, and then stops to choose another student to continue on. The last student to use his/her word will end the story! You can choose to end there or let the students try to guess what their classmates have written on his/her paper. The students with most correct guesses wins!
