Quick Go Activities - Tricks to improve a boring lesson

It’s easy to get fatigued sometimes in our teaching when our brains went totally dry and can’t come up with any ideas to boost the learning energy in the classroom. 

Here are some quick go activities I collected through colleagues or online resources. It is always great to come back for a revisit now and then.

*The first* article is from infromED in 2013. It offers 25 tricks to jumpstart routine lessons. They are divided into subjects: Math, Reading, Writing, Science, Social Studies, and offered when a specific skill or skill is targeted at. The ideas are very practical and easy to implement given that our ESL/EFL curriculum integrates many of those subjects. My favorites are 
 

• adding music or rhythm when working on number counting/multiplication
• adding movement, drama or party to recreate or actualize an event 
  
• adding manipulatives when too much mental exercise is taking place 
• adding student-student quiz masters when discussion or teacher-student QA is wearying the classes out
• adding candy/chocolate or any kind of treats to boost students’ interests and energy

These ideas are all simple and practical. I always feel pumped again when I come back to revisit these ideas. 

*The second* article is written by teachtought in 2018, specifically addresses the necessity to get students moving in the classroom and it offered 5 activities to be incorporated in any lessons.  Simple and easy to prepare. 

• Gallery Walk or Chalk Talk - giving and gathering feedbacks
• Whiteboard Meetings - graph or image presentations
• North-pole South-pole continuum - assessing background knowledge
• Musical mingle - finding different discussion partners
• Stations - differentiation 

Although the authors stated that their activities are used with high school students I found them also useful in the elementary classrooms when I implemented then with more control of questions I asked and more practice on the routines/discussion on the goals with the children.