"Give the people what they want – projects in groups"

Bored on vacation is a terrible thing, but it does not come from a lack of things to do, rather a lack of imagination.  Give the students imagination and you give them the ability to learn from you.  If the students were bored in class it probably wasn’t entirely my teaching (at times that could be debatable) but more to do with their interest in the material.  I found that projects – and not just activities but projects in groups due over the course of a week – were a solution to many student problems in class.  A project was usually something that took several days to a week or two and was graded based on the entire groups input; some projects required the students to teach the class.  Group activities are not only a successful classroom teaching technique but a management technique as well.  They tend to be more interested in doing a project then hear me lecture.  The activity was an outlet and a way for them to discover they had the ability to participate in a way suitable to them.  It is a style of peer-managing.  Together they not only want to do the activity but keep each other in check.  This goes on one assumption as follows: they knew the classroom rules and procedures and were taught them thoroughly. 
I gave several projects my first year of teaching and they performed so well for me I made sure to do twice as many in my second year.  The largest project I gave the first year was an architectural design and model of a house.  The students were much easier to manage because their attitudes in the class were changed dramatically.  If I were to ask them to do something during a project, they were ten times more likely to comply than when we weren’t doing an activity.