Lesson starters

The first step in a great lesson is an appropriate starter activity – a short activity that you have written on the board or that is waiting for pupils as they enter the classroom. It often starts working before you do. While you are greeting pupils at the door, pupils should already be busy completing the starter. Pupils entering your room should never have to ask themselves, “What am I supposed to be doing?”

A starter should be started, completed and reviews in around 5 minutes.

An effective starter has four main elements:

The starter should be in the same place every time so taking it and getting started is the habit of all your pupils. You can write it on the board or post it on Google Classroom having written it in advance.
Pupils should be able to complete the starter without any direction from the teacher, without any discussion with their classmates and in most cases without any other materials.
The activity should take three to five minutes to complete and there should be a written product from it (back of jotter or on a mini whiteboard). This not only makes it more rigorous and more engaging, but it allows you to better hold students accountable for doing it since you can clearly see whether they are (and they can see that you can see).
The activity generally
1. should have meaning - it should be linked to the topics being studied
2. could include low-stakes assessment, promoting recall (retrieval practice) from everyone
3. could include material required for the lesson, recent and less recent material - it is good practice to include less recent material to demonstrate the important of reflecting on learning from previous lessons.

Adapted from https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/now-primer/

Starter activities add value to the lesson. They help pupils strengthen their memory whilst helping them recognise what they already know and what they don't know. They motive pupils to study.

Examples: