Close an Activity

when designing a training course activities will often be given a proposed amount of time.  remember, it's not set in stone and can be changed.  think about your students, what has gone on earlier in the day, the group as a whole and what you aim to achieve by the end of the session.  would it make sense to expand it, time wise?  will the students gain if it is expanded?

as a general rule of  allow all activities to finish naturally.  wait until most participants have completed the task, (even if it means allowing it to run for an additional half hour) and then wrap it up and carry out the review.  

if you do stop an activity before the students have finished, you’ll find you hear cries of, “just five more minutes”, "we haven't finished yet", "ohhh no" and will receive some dirty looks.  in general, students never want to stop an activity if they haven't finished it, even if they weren't too committed to it when they started.

if you want students to speed up, give them time warnings so they can move faster at their own pace, e.g. "you have five minutes left", "you have one minute left", "you have half a minute left" etc., etc.

Practice

1. in your lesson plan write additional relevant activities into your lesson plan, then if an activity finishes quicker than you expect, you'll have extra tasks for the students to carry out
2. before the training starts, work out which activities in your lesson plan might take longer than you expect and then work out which tasks can be shortened

image taken from here