5-minute Filler Activities with AI

TL;DR

(Instructional Guidance, Transcript, and Prompts below)

Why Teachers Need Filler Activities

Teachers often reach the end of a class period with extra time and no remaining lesson content. Instead of giving students free time, educators can use that time for short, meaningful instructional activities—known as “fillers.” These quick tasks keep students engaged and reinforce learning while requiring little to no preparation.

Four Types of AI-Generated Filler Activities

General 5-Minute Fillers

These fillers are simple, fun activities across subjects like English Language Arts, Math, and Science. They mix individual and small group work and align with content standards. Teachers can select from a variety of AI-generated ideas that need minimal setup.

Subject-Specific, Whole-Class Fillers

Teachers can create subject-focused fillers (such as math warm-ups or mini-games) that involve the entire class. These activities should require little or no set-up, perhaps just a a whiteboard or projector. They include quick, engaging tasks like number chains or estimation challenges.

Competitive Group Fillers

Teachers can make learning lively by introducing filler activities with competition. Small groups compete in short, standards-based challenges to promote teamwork and engagement.

Physical Movement Fillers

These filler activities incorporate physical activity, supporting kinesthetic learning and mental engagement. These align with research on the connection between physical activity and learning development. These small-group activities include movement, creativity, and competition, which not only energize students but also enhance memory and understanding.

Conclusion

The video demonstrates how teachers can use AI to generate and customize 5-minute filler activities that are educational, fun, and easy to implement. These fillers transform spare classroom minutes into purposeful learning experiences that boost student engagement and reinforce content understanding.

5-Minute Fillers: Instructional Implications

Pedagogical and Instructional Implications

Every minute of instructional time can contribute to learning when used purposefully. Short “filler” activities—those few minutes that often remain at the end of a class—should be treated as opportunities for meaningful engagement rather than unstructured downtime. Teachers can prepare a toolkit of quick, standards-aligned activities that require little setup and sustain attention while reinforcing academic content.

Well-designed mini-activities share several key features. Each has a clear instructional purpose, supports active participation, and encourages students to apply what they have learned in new or playful ways. These micro-lessons may involve individual reflection, collaborative problem-solving, or teacher-guided whole-class tasks. When thoughtfully chosen, they provide immediate reinforcement of concepts and keep students mentally present until class ends.

Incorporating elements of collaboration and competition can heighten motivation and engagement. Group challenges, quick-response games, or timed problem-solving tasks can serve both formative and social purposes, promoting teamwork while revealing student understanding in real time. Physical activity is another effective strategy. Movement-based tasks activate multiple areas of the brain, increase alertness, and improve retention, making them especially valuable during transitions or at the close of longer lessons.

By prompting an AI tool with specific parameters, teachers can generate a broad range of ideas aligned with curriculum goals. The teacher then selects and refines the most appropriate options for their students, maintaining professional control over instructional quality and classroom appropriateness.

Overall, short learning activities—whether quiet, collaborative, competitive, or physical—should be intentional extensions of instruction. When educators plan and adapt them thoughtfully, every minute in the classroom becomes an opportunity to strengthen engagement, deepen understanding, and make learning more dynamic.

AI Support and Use

Teachers can use AI tools as partners in developing short, purposeful activities that maximize every minute of class time.

By entering specific prompts (such as “generate 5-minute collaborative review activities using minimal materials” or “create quick movement-based learning tasks for vocabulary practice”), AI can instantly provide a range of ideas aligned with instructional goals.

Educators then review and adapt the suggestions, selecting those that fit their students, standards, and classroom environment.

AI can also help teachers vary grouping formats (individual, small group, whole class), add competitive or cooperative elements, and integrate physical movement into academic tasks. The teacher can ask for specific structures or approaches according to student needs and learning expectations.

This simple, time-saving strategy allows teachers to maintain professional judgment and pedagogical intent while using AI to save time, expand their teaching toolkit of engaging strategies, and ensure that even those last-minute gaps are filled with meaningful learning opportunities.

Full Transcript and Prompts

Why You Need Filler Activities

You have students in your classroom for a day if you’re elementary perhaps, or a class period, or if you’re a specialty kind of a teacher, maybe several times during the week. And invariably it happens. You’ve simply run out of stuff to do.

You’re getting down to the end of the day or end of the period, and everybody’s done everything. You’ve gone through your whole lesson plan, and you’ve got a little bit of time left over.

Well, your job while you’re there with your kids is to make sure that they are engaged in meaningful learning activities, but then you get that little period at the end and you don’t have anything. What you need are some filler activities.

The idea of, “Well, we’ve got 10 minutes left, kids. Just relax or work on your homework or play on your phones” or whatever the case may be, that’s not your job. Your job is to use that time to provide meaningful instruction and instructional opportunities. So, we need some fillers. We need a toolkit of fillers.

And that’s what we’re going to do in this video. We’re going to look at four ways to do this. The core is pretty similar for all of them. Just give me a handful of activities, 10 5-minute filler activities, but we’re going to do it in a few different ways so, you have some options.

Now, will you use all 10 that we came up with? Absolutely not. Will you find two or three or four that you can just tuck away for times when you need them? Yes. And that’s what we’re trying to do: build up your toolkit of quick and simple filler but meaningful activities starting with prompt number one. So here we go.

Type 1: General 5-Minute Filler Activities

Prompt

Create 10 5-minute instructional fillers for 3rd grade students. Subjects: ELA, Math, Science. They should be a mix of individual and small group activities. They need to be fun and require minimal set-up and resources. For each one, provide the relevant content standards.

Create 10 minute instructional filler activities and we’re going to use third grade as this example. For the first one we said what subjects we want these activities to address. And because it’s elementary a variety. Okay. We want some individual ones. We want some group activities, but it’s a filler, right? So, they need to be fun. Also, because it’s something you’re doing on the fly when you need them, you probably don’t have a lot of materials prepared. So, require minimal setup and resources. And because it’s instructional, what actually are the kids learning? So, I need some content standards as well. All right.

So, let’s try our first example here (as soon as I find my ChatGPT), and let’s see if we can create a pool. And this is very basic.

Obviously, we’re not looking for specific types of activities. Just give me a bunch. “I’m the teacher. I will use my judgment and pick and choose the ones that I think my kids would like and would apply to my classroom.”

So, what do we get? English language arts, word letter, setup, standards, whole group, pairs, small group, whole group, for mathematics, and on and on and on.

Now, obviously, if one of these looks interesting, or more, and you want to know more about it (if it’s not just immediately obvious), you can say tell me more about seven or whichever one it is if you want some additional instructions. And because we’re in the same discussion thread, here is more about that.

So that is type one.

(Pizza fractions. Everybody does fractions with pizza. There’s a lot of ways to do fractions. I don’t know why we always go back to pizza, but that’s what we do.) Okay? And etc, etc., etc. Okay? So that’s number one.

Let’s take a look at a modification of that. Let’s take a look at prompt number two.

Type 2: Subject Specific, Whole Class Activities

Prompt

Create 10 5-minute instructional filler activities for 6th grade students related to Math.  They should be whole class activities led by the teacher. Activities need to be fun and require minimal set-up an resources. For each one, provide the relevant content standards.

10 five-minute instructional activities. Let’s go to sixth grade. Here we’re declaring a specific subject area, math in this case. And we want them to be whole class led by the teacher. So you’re standing up or walking around and this is something you are directing the class to do. So we’re going to ask for that.

However, they need to be fun again, and also the minimal setup and resources and the content standards. So, let’s give this one a go right here. Let me grab a new chat and go. Let’s see what we get. Maybe something interesting here.

Here are 10 fun, whole class activities. They only need a whiteboard or projector. Very nice. Number chain. Take turns giving math operations. All right, that’s actually looks like fun. Quick shapes, estimate measures, nice closest one wins, etc., etc., etc.

Now, one thing that I saw there is some of these are in the nature of a race or a little competition. So, let’s take a look at number three, where we specifically are looking for that type of an activity. (Would you rather $2 every day or $10 on Friday? And explain your reasoning. Very nice, very simple.)

[These are] Things you can just pull out of your pocket and say, “All right, here’s what we’re going to do.” And the kids won’t even know that you’re kind of scratching your head saying, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got 10 minutes left in my class. What are we going to do?”

Type 3: Competitive Filler Activities

Prompt

Create 10 5-minute instructional filler activities for 8th grade students related to Science. List the relevant standards. They should be small group activities for groups to compete. Describe the activity, provide rules for the competitive basis, and the way to win.

All right, so number three. Again, five-minute instructional fillers. Let’s do 8th grade science here. All right. And the standards, of course. Here we want small group and for groups to compete. So we specifically want competitive activities here.

Describe the activity. Provide the rules for the competitive basis or the competition and tell me how do you win.

Let’s see what we get here…as soon as I copy it and drop it into a new chat.

So, you see these are all fairly similar at the start: 10 five-filler activities. What we’re doing is we’re defining the request in multiple ways: competitive, individual teacher led, and things of that nature.

So, what do we have? Element relay, about five minutes each. List as many elements as you can in 10 minutes. Write them etc., etc., etc. Examples of Newton’s three laws in real life. I would do that one. Okay. And mystery density, etc., etc.

So there is a third approach to these little classroom fillers. But let’s do one more. Okay?

Type 4: Physical Activities

Prompt

I need 10 5-minute instructional filler activities for 11th grade ELA students. Activities should competitive for small groups and require some form of physical activity. We will do these in a large open area, so there’s plenty of room to move around. Make them fun! They should require no resources other than typical student supplies.

Again 10 minute, 10 5-minute activities, 11th grade. I want small groups, and require some form of physical activity, because there’s a pretty good chance by the end of the class period, if it’s English language arts, they’ve been probably sitting around a lot. So, let’s get them up out of their chairs and moving around. And importantly, we’ve got plenty of room to move around. Make them fun—with an exclamation mark. They should require no resources other than typical student resources.

And here the idea. Incorporating physical activity into content area learning is actually very solidly grounded in research. When we use more of our body, we use more of our brains. When we use more of our brain, learning is accelerated!

So that’s really what this is doing here. Demonstrating that, and it’s going to give us some fun activities, and, again, if I want to know more about one of these, then I just ask for the explanation.

Conclusion

So there you go! Four approaches to generating this filler activities for when you need something to do at the end of your class. I hope you found this useful. Take care.