If you've spent a lot of time observing other teacher's classrooms, you'll notice that the good teachers never run out of stuff for their students to do. There's always something they can work on, revise, practice, or otherwise stay busy with until the bell rings. These teachers are never at a loss for activities in their classroom. How in the world do they do it?
As someone who is going on 5 years of teaching, I think I've just about about solved the "dead time" problem myself. And I've done it with one simple rule, which I call the Rule of 3. It goes like this: "For every class period, have 3 distinct, significant activities which must be accomplished that period." That's it! It's that simple! The activities could be reading a certain number of pages, completing discussion questions, working on a project - whatever. Just have three things, an A, a B, and a C, that you plan to do that day.
Now you might be wondering what's so magical about this formula. (But believe me, it is magical. You will use up that 50 minute class period every time.) Here's a more detailed explanation about why this works so well.
Reason #1: It Gives You Flexibility
Suppose you are working on A, your first activity, and you finish 5 minutes early. Uh oh. If A was all you had planned for the day, then you have 5 minutes of dead time, and that's all there is to it. If you had an A and also a B planned, then things aren't so bad, but you're still committed to making B last 5 extra minutes to use up the time. But if you have A, B, and C, you've got options. If you can't make B last 5 more minutes, you can try again with C. And if all else fails, you can take a few minutes at the end of class to review the work done during one of your three segments. With three different things to review, there will be no shortage of material.
Reason #2: It Equips You for Unexpected Delays
Suppose you're a rookie teacher and you've only got one activity planned for the period. You get halfway through it and RIIIIING! It's that fire drill you forgot was scheduled for today! Everybody line up, grab your coats, does Dimitry or Julia carry the emergency backpack? Hold on while I walk in front etc... When all is said and done, the time for the fire drill means you didn't finish activity A, and need to take it up again tomorrow. But you've only got 15 minutes left of activity A, not nearly enough for a full period. Uh oh. However this is NOT a problem for followers of the Rule of 3. You got through A and B, not C? No big deal. If C is important, just use it as one of your three activities for tomorrow. If it's not, just drop it! You got A and B done, and done completely.
Reason #3: It Lets You Prioritize
Despite our best efforts as teachers, there will be times when we fall behind schedule. Whether its snow days, classroom management issues, or just poor planning, there will days we we're on lesson 35 when we're supposed to be on 40. When you need to cut stuff out of your teaching to make up for lost time, it is MUCH easier to have 3 distinct activities in a given period to choose from. If you have to cut out your vocabulary review to make up for those 2 snow days, fine. Better that then having to calculate what percentage of some essential activity needs to go.
Now of course, the Rule of 3 presupposes that you have 3 actually good activities that you can have students do. Choosing those activities will be the subject of a future post.