Recently, I was teaching a large group of students in one of our smaller classrooms. The mid-afternoon sun shone mercilessly through the large windows, the oxygen was nearly depleted, and the heat was steadily marinating us. About halfway through the lesson, the students had that look in their eyes. You know the one: the “glazed-eyes-at-half-mast, world-weary, are-we-ever-gonna-finish-class” look.

Time for a breeze of change to breathe some life back into us.

Anticipating that our energy levels would flag, I had prepared a wall crawl (AKA gallery walk), in which students were to saunter from station to station in small groups. On that particular afternoon, I’d set up the stations on the hallway walls outside our classroom. Since the temperature in the hallway was lower than in our classroom, students were motivated to unglue themselves from their sticky plastic seats and move to a cooler area of the building to do the tasks at each station.

Upon returning to the classroom, my students weren’t exactly full of energy or chomping at the bit to continue working. But their eyes didn’t droop shut either. They were willing to focus on English until the end of the lesson when they could finally escape into the scorching summer heat, presumably to locate the nearest ice cream parlor.