Topic 4: The first five minutes

The principle of the first five minutes is a simple thing that any teacher, any trainer can do in their classroom.

These first five minutes are used to engage the pupils, the students in a conversation outside the educational context, a rather personal conversation.

It can be about their day, games, music, TV programmes, sports, films and anything else they want to discuss. It can be a few minutes with just a handful of students or a more generalized discussion with the whole class about a current event.

You can learn a lot about your students in those few minutes each day. You will be surprised. You will quickly discover, through some of the answers, that some people do not have an easy life.