Silent, sneaky, and surprisingly entertaining things to do right now.
Do these completely in your head. No phone, no paper needed.
Classic ways to decorate your notes while appearing busy.
Pass the paper when the teacher isn't looking. Classic.
Draw a grid of dots (6×6 is good). Take turns connecting two adjacent dots with a line. When you complete the 4th side of a box, write your initial in it. Most boxes wins.
Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House. Write MASH at the top. Fill in categories (spouse, car, job, city) with options. Spiral count eliminates options until your "future" is revealed.
Pick a word from the current lesson for bonus points. Draw 6 dashes. The guesser suggests letters. Wrong guesses build the hangman. Classic and endlessly replayable.
Draw 9 regular tic-tac-toe grids in a 3×3 arrangement. Where you play in the small grid determines which large grid your opponent plays next. The meta-game is wild.
Write a word. Pass to partner who writes the first word that comes to mind. Keep going. See how bizarre the chain gets after 20 words.
Pick a category (countries, foods, animals, movies). Name one for every letter of the alphabet in your head. Try to fill all 26.
Imagine your home. Place vivid, weird images at each location to memorise a list (grocery list, vocab words, historical dates). Ancient Romans invented this. It actually works.
Sounds boring. Is actually a mindfulness exercise. Count each number with a full breath. Silently. See how high you get before you lose count.
Pick a melody from memory. Change the words to be about your current class. The more absurd the better. You will be laughing internally within 2 minutes.
Cover your notes. Try to rewrite what you just heard from memory. This is actually one of the best study techniques (active recall). It looks like you're taking notes.
For each fact mentioned, write a trivia question. "What was the year of ___? Who invented ___?" You end up with a ready-made study guide.