The default setting on detention time is have the students just sit silently or copy the rules if they had that added on.  There is value in having a student sit silently;  it may be the only time they learn to do so that week, and time alone with their thoughts doesn’t hurt.

I tell them if they talk or distract the clock resets–it is 15 minutes from the time they stop talking.

If they are squirming it makes detention that much more effective because they don’t want to return.  Though sometimes I let them read and/or do homework.  Other times I engage them in a little conversation to indicate how un-evil I am in real life, just that they are merely paying a consequence for a rule broken doesn’t make them a bad student either.

This is all a judgement call–do what you think will help your classroom environment in the long run.  In other words, if a student really likes coming after school to talk to you, then chatting with them isn’t going to help your case.

I never have less than 2 or 3 students in the room for my own protection against any accusations.  There have been cases where students conspire to accuse teachers of various things;  were I wary of that, I would simply stand in the doorway marking papers or reading or keep myself visible somehow.

Question: I am a foreign language teacher so there has to be talking and action in my classroom. The students misinterpret this activity as meaning you can talk about whatever you like. I have worked on it and worked on it and told them they may talk only in the target language but many are just first year students. What should I do here?

Answer:  The whole idea here is that there is a consequence for anything that is not contributing positively to the classroom environment that you, as a professional, want.  Most activities that seem like they are a loophole are not at all if you check the rules;  in this case, students not talking about the assignment are off task, and receive detention.  My experience (and I tell students this) is that I can merely look at their body language and listen to the tone of the conversation without knowing exactly what they are saying to know if they are on the assignment or not, so I don’t have to be near them or listen to false protests of  ’We were talking about the work’.   ‘Get on Task or come after school today’.

An Example of Good Group Work

A More Challenging Group

Also, I recommend quiet academic book work for the first week or two to get students accustomed to a focused atmosphere, then slowly breaking them into the group work a bit at a time, and immediately stopping it and going back to quiet work if they are off-task, so that they know group work is a privilege and not for gossip or social networking.