If time permits, we'll finish with miscellaneous topics selected by the students. Most introductory Perl training is structured as a sequence of lectures. After a 45-minute lecture, the class does lab exercises for another 45 minutes or so. Each slide has an example on it. The students try out the example while I explain what's going on.
Some slides have exercises.
There are no extended labs. This is a much more efficient use of time than the traditional approach. Nobody gets left behind in the middle of a long lecture, and students who finish early can develop the example a little further for a minute or two until it's time to go on. The slides are on the student workstations, so students can return to something they didn't understand without holding up the rest of the class. The refresher course will be probably be useful to anyone who has not been programming in perl for at least a year.