Milling to Music

Purpose: There are many ways to pair students up for activities. Here’s one way to find partners and get learners out of their seats at the same time.

Procedure:

1. Play a song or other piece of music.
2. Everyone gets up and walks around the room.
3. When the music stops, the person closest to you is your partner.
4. Now do an activity like Sentence Starters in pairs:
   1. Each student has the beginning of a sentence.
      • For beginners, it might be “Every day I _____.”
      • For more advanced students, it might be “I have never _____.”
   2. Each partner shares the stem they have and the partner must complete the statement.
   3. After reading an article in a higher level class, sentence starters can promote critical thinking:
      • One example of an opinion in the article was _____.
      • One thing I disagreed with in the article was _____.
5. Repeat playing music, stopping to complete the activity with a new partner each time.