“Transitions eat my lesson time”

A transition looks like one instruction, but to the class it is thirty separate decisions: whether to finish the sentence, where the sheet goes, who moves first. Left open, each student settles those at their own speed, and the room drifts to the pace of its slowest corner. When the instruction lands while half of them are still mid-task, you repeat it, and repetition quietly teaches the class that the first telling is optional. Nobody is dawdling on purpose. The changeover was announced, but it was never taught.

The leak survives because transitions sit in nobody's plan. You plan the activities and leave the joins to chance, and three lost minutes never feel worth confronting on any one day, though over a term they add up to whole lessons. Practising a changeover feels like spending teaching time on housekeeping. The techniques below win the minutes back in three ways: some sharpen the moment itself with a clear signal and a timed, narrated move; some treat the routine as content, taught and practised until it runs without you; and some remove friction at source, so materials and endings need less managing.