We live in a world where educators are expected to get better results from students without any additional classroom time. To make sure that your teachers can meet the objectives of the curriculum, it is important to recognize and remove the 'time filling' activities that teachers fall into every day. Here are some of the 'fluff' exercises that can be removed or assigned for homework.
Vocabulary Lists - The vocabulary list activity, in which students are given a list of words that they must then define is great in theory. But the reality is that the time spent on these exercises is rarely worth it. Students will often forget the definition right after they are finished the task. It is much better to spend time teaching vocabulary in context as questions arise. Teaching vocabulary in context is much more likely to lead to a student remembering what it was they learned because they have a memory of why they learned it.