The teacher I'm helping with my volunteer work had a rougher time than usual today. She had to drill them with jumping jacks, insistent questions, etc., to get their attention. She eventually got the class back to paying attention, sort of, but it was a lot of work. The problem was the very first problem, which was not an equation (too many unknowns--unknown number of pizza slices for unknown number of guests) and for which the technique she wanted was not totally clear. The students intuitively knew the answer, but it was not clear what she was trying to get across with the technique, and she basically lost them for a while because of that.
It appears that, when you are starting a class, you need to boot up with something interactive, comprehensible, and not too challenging, to get a good feeling going around the class. Even if it doesn't contribute too much to the actual learning, you need to set a friendly, positive "onda".
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