6 fun ways to fill those 5 extra minutes at the end of class

Do you ever find yourself with 5 extra minutes at the end of class? Maybe it didn’t take as long to get through something as you had planned, maybe the students worked faster than you thought, maybe you just didn’t have as many interruptions and management issues. No matter what the cause, having an extra few minutes can cause a panic in any teacher’s mind. But instead of seeing those 5 minutes as a bad thing, why not think of them as “bonus” minutes that you can use to do something you might not have otherwise had time for? Here are some ideas for things you can do with just a few extra minutes

Using 5 extra minutes to review vocabulary

If you’ve been learning new vocabulary, 5 extra minutes is all you need to play a fun vocabulary game. It can be done with almost any vocabulary with no prep necessary. You tell the students that you are going to do something (host a party, go shopping, buy a gift) and they need to guess what you are going to buy, who you are going to invite – whatever fits with the scenario you set up. Students will then need to ask you if you’re going to buy/take/invite the different things from the vocabulary you’ve learned. You’ll tell them yes or no based on whatever criteria you’ve set. Here’s an example:

Today, we learned some words for common professions. So I might tell my students that I’m having a party and making my guest list. They will ask me “Est-ce que vous allez inviter (some job title from the vocabulary list)?”

Before we start each round, I will have criteria in mind for whether I will say yes or no. It can be any criteria based on the vocabulary or meaning – I’m saying yes to professions that require college, or ones that start with a vowel, or ones who involve working with other people. As the students ask the questions and get my answers, they should pay attention to what I say yes to – and if the guess the criteria, they can test their hypothesis.

Using 5 extra minutes to watch a video

There are a TON of short videos on YouTube that you can use to fill 5 extra minutes. YouTube shorts are 1-2 minutes long and cover all sorts of topics. If you already have subscribed to some channels in the target language, you may already have a set of these videos ready to watch! I keep a playlist at the ready that has little videos about culture, language, current events, etc. that I can use with an extra few minutes. I also use some of them for bell work on Desmos, so you may get a little extra out of those videos by repurposing them.

If you haven’t seen Alice in Paris, it’s a series of videos that are around 2 minutes each. Alice loves food and the video follows through on her adventures around Paris and the silly predicaments she finds herself in. The English videos are no longer available, but for more advanced students they may enjoy the scenery and stories. If you really enjoy the videos, we have some activities in the store to turn a 2 minute video into a complete lesson plan.

Using 5 extra minutes to practice questions

5 extra minutes will fly by with the Akinator! The Akinator website is a fun way to practice reading comprehension and questions and your students will be astonished by what it can do. The idea is that you think of a thing – a person or an object – and then answer the yes/no questions from the Akinator. At the end, the site will almost certainly have guessed the thing you had in mind. My students love coming up with ideas for things that they think will stump the Akinator. Spoiler alert: they almost never stump the Akinator.

How to spend 5 extra minutes in a VERY French way

Dictées are a thing in France. Teachers read something aloud and students write it down. Usually, there’s something tricky about the dictée. For our students, you don’t need to be tricky – just writing down a basic sentence will be enough. Read a sentence, have your students write it down, then reveal the correct form of the sentence on the board. It doesn’t take long to come up with a sentence and you can easily do something that uses whatever vocabulary or structures you’ve been learning recently.

5 extra minutes of culture

When all else fails, 5 minutes of culture can be the perfect thing. There are many videos from Comme une Française about quirks and interesting parts of French culture. You don’t have to show the video, you can use them as inspiration. It could be something about behavior, language, customs, whatever! Your students will enjoy learning something they may find interesting.

Use AI for 5 extra minutes of reading

Have you used ChatGPT yet? If not, this is the perfect time to try it! You can tell the chatbot the words and level you want to use and it can write a super-quick story or poem for you. Feed the criteria into the chat (“Write a short story in level A1 French using the chanteur, n’aime pas and fromage”) and see what pops up. You can tell it to write a silly story, a sad story, whatever! Song lyrics, poems…all sorts of creative possibilities.