12 Filler activities for online lessons

Have you ever found yourself in a lesson situation when you’ve run out of materials but haven’t run out of time? I have. 

Why might this happen?

It’s the beginning of a new course or you substitute your colleague and simply don’t know for sure how long it’ll take students to go through tasks.

Work with 2 attendees is likely to go faster than with 10, as time spent on giving feedback, and explanation is going to decrease.  

Students got excited about a topic and had plenty to say and it was just a shame to interrupt them or a task turned out to be overly challenging and extra time was needed to clarify everything. 

As a result, it’s simply unreasonable to start a 20-minute activity with only 5-10 minutes left.

So what can you do with the remaining time? 

That’s when filler activities, aka time fillers or fillers can come into play.

What is a filler activity? 

Apart from bridging lesson gaps, fillers can be intentionally used as ice breakers, warm-up activities, and revision tools. 

They provide effective ways to foster collaboration, establish rapport, and have extra practice.

So, what ideas can you have in your pocket to pull out when needed? 

Let me share with you 12 time fillers I use with teenage and adult learners.

Time: 10 minutes

Students create shorter words from a longer one within 5 minutes. 

You could narrow down parts of speech to nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, excluding shorter ones, like articles, pronouns, or prepositions. If done in small groups, each team chooses a “secretary” who notes down everyone’s ideas. The team with the largest number of correct words wins.

Example:

• Unimaginatively: tingle, vital, mine, game, tame, etc.
• Incomprehensible: hem, mop, income, nice, come, etc.
• Uncharacteristically: call, nectar, telly, satire, rusty, etc.

Time: 5-10 minutes

With a few extra minutes on your hands, the whole class could co-create a story. You get the ball rolling by saying the first phrase. 

Then nominate individual students to contribute one sentence to the story, building on what the previous person has said.

To make the activity more connected to the topic students are learning, ask them to use a certain grammatical construction or vocabulary, like the past simple tense or personality adjectives.

Example: 

Teacher: “Once upon a time, in a small village, lived an adventurous boy named Peter.”

Student 1: “He was a curious boy who dreamt to see what was outside his village.”

Student 2: “One morning, he got up early, took a piece of bread and a bottle of water, and quietly left home.”

Time: 10 minutes

Have you ever taught students who seem to be unable to keep away from their phones during lessons? If so, the following activity can turn phones into friends.

Students have to surf the net for about 5 minutes in order to find some interesting facts about an animal, a country, an activity, or any other topic relevant to your course at that moment. 

After that, each person shares the facts with fellow students who need to guess what is being described. For large classes, the guessing part can be done in pairs or small groups.

When the preparation is over, students read out their quiz questions with options and the other person or team tries to choose the correct answers. 

A hidden benefit is that creating a task from scratch puts students in their teacher’s shoes and increases their sense of responsibility. 

Time: 5-10 minutes

ESL Vault, Print Discuss websites allow you to pick and choose questions related to the topics of your lessons and thus provide additional speaking practice. 

There is also room for creativity with this exercise as you could allocate some time for students to come up with their questions. 

Learners are told to think of a question they could ask someone they meet for the first time. 

Each student needs to type one question in a shared document, let’s say, in Google Docs. 

As soon as you’ve got the set of questions, students go on to discuss them and then report what they’ve found out about their new classmates. In this way, the whole group gets familiarized with each other.

Time: 5-10 minutes

Course books are usually equipped with wordlists of necessary words to learn. The next activity is aimed at revising and activating them. 

Students take turns to choose a word or phrase from a relevant section and explain its meaning without naming it. The other classmates guess. 

Another variation is drawing in a shared document, using a platform like Padlet to illustrate the selected word or phrase. 

Time: 5-10 minutes

The previous guessing activity can be modified by using miming in lieu of explaining or drawing. 

Through facial expressions and gestures, students are capable of portraying emotions, like bewilderment, exhilaration, cheerfulness. 

To brush up on irregular verbs and tenses, prepare a set of, let’s say, 5 sentences for each student and send them privately. 

Students must pronounce the sentences but use body language for the words in bold. 

Their partners have guessed the verb as soon as it has been put in the correct grammatical form. Fast finishers are encouraged to come up with their own sentences to keep the activity going.

Time: 10 minutes

LearnHip website enables you to create a board game. 

Enter questions you’d like students to answer or statements for them to agree or disagree with. 

Share the link with players who then take turns to roll the virtual dice and do the tasks in the squares they land on. The winner is the person who reaches FINISH first.

Time: 10 minutes

Crossword Labs allows you to create a crossword puzzle and share the link with the class. 

Students can work individually or with others in breakout rooms. In the latter case, one of the participants should share a screen and enter answers. 

The green colour indicates correct answers and the red incorrect ones. Finally, a teacher provides the correct answers for the words nobody guessed.

Time: 5-10 minutes

Replace some words in the idioms students had learned with pictures. Share your screen and ask them to say full phrases. 

Example:

Let’s keep our discussion short and sweet. (a picture of sweets)

This assignment is a hard nut to crack. (a picture of a nut)

We fought tooth and nail to get the route of the new road changed. (a picture of a nail)

Time: 10 minutes

Select a short video that you think might appeal to your students and create some exercises for it. You could use an AI tool called Twee for assistance. 

Choose the appropriate level, click “Do the magic!” and — voilà — the activity is ready.

Time: 10 minutes

In this activity, students are given pre-assigned roles. For instance, one student is a scientist in Antarctica. 

He gets a card with the information about food he eats and the clothes he wears at the Polar Station. 

The other person is a journalist who needs to think of questions to ask the scientist about food and clothes. In feedback, a few “journalists” can briefly share what they’ve learnt from their interviewees.

Time: 10 minutes

Choose an issue to debate. One student should assume the role of someone who is for it and the other who is against it. 

In feedback, you might ask what their true attitude towards the issue is.

Example: 

Issue: Children shouldn’t be given homework at school.

Pros: Children spend less time with family and friends.

         Homework is stressful for children, teachers and parents.

Cons: Doing homework teaches children discipline.

           It provides additional practice.

Final words

I hope that incorporating these ideas into your lessons will help you avoid awkward moments, boost your confidence and make the learning process even more engaging.