A huge portion of my consistent ability to maintain the ruse of being a smart person stems from having consumed an inordinate quantity of books in my youth, filling my head with ideas, vocabulary, and the grammar, syntax, and spelling of Standard American English (of course other Englishes than this are perfectly valid languages spoken by many smarter people than I, but mastery of SAE is key to the ruse of intellect). In the desire to pass on that benefit to the youth of today, some class time ought be devoted to quiet free-reading.
During planning for every lesson, the question should be asked: Would the students do better and learn more if I just shut up and had them read books of their choice for 40 minutes instead? If yes, scrap the lesson -- and it's a much higher bar to clear than one might suppose.