Waiting for those latecomers to arrive or getting everyone focussed in a lively way on English; bringing the lesson to a collective close or making up that gaping five minutes – fillers are essential in your teaching tool box.

Previously in the Network Teachers’ Club we provided you with fillers for every level, from A1 to B1: Fun exercises that bring the focus of the students back to the centre and encourage communication between students in a lively way. If you would like to look again at these activities, click on the box ‘Warm-up or Round-up activitities’ below.

And if you need some more ‘five-minute fillers’ to use in your classroom, we’d like to offer you four further short activities below, two appropriate for the beginning of the lesson and two usable at the end of the lesson.

Four five-minute fillers

1 At the beginning of the lesson

a) Network
Write the word NETWORK (or any other longish word) on the board and give students two minutes to find as many words as possible of two letters or more which they can build from any of the word’s letters (for example: NO, WE, TWO, WON, TEN, WORN, WORK, NOTE). Set your timer on your phone to make it more competitive. If there is space in the classroom, ask students to work in teams of three or four and to write the words on the board at the front.

b) Yesterday
On the board write: Yesterday, I …; This morning, I …; Last weekend, I …; Last Monday, I …
Ask students to complete the sentences. In pairs, students ask each other: What did you do (yesterday)? - I went …

 

2 At the end of the lesson

a) Review
During the lesson, make sure you keep some free space on the board just for new vocabulary. At the end of the lesson, go through the words you have written and ask students to use them in a sentence, give the opposite meaning, or give a German translation. Take a photo on your smart phone or tablet (or write the words down) and then in the following lesson, start the lesson by recycling these words.

b) Reflecting
Give students one or two minutes to look through the exercises or texts they have used in the lesson. Students close their books. Ask them: What did you learn in your lesson today? Compare answers together. You might be surprised that the things students remember aren’t always the things you have explicitly taught!