Starts of lessons set the tone for what follows. But there is potential for various problems in this part of the lesson. It’s worth considering how we can improve the start of our lessons by identifying the potential problems holding us back and seeking to address these.
Potential Problem #1 Students don’t quickly engage with the first task.
Perhaps they:
- Are slow to enter, continuing conversations
- Sit at their desks not doing anything
Possible Solutions
We might need to do a bit of detective work to figure out why this is the case. Are they in a habit of being slow to start? Is lateness common? Is the first task not organised (more on that below) or too hard? If we tackle these problems/answer these questions and we still have non-completion,
Make the expectation clear.
We can do this:
- Beforehand, for example when we meet a class for the first time. Whenever you come into the room, Year 9, I expect you to… (This could also work as a reset with a class). Define the expectation as simply as possible, for example, in the first minute you will:
- Put bags on the floor under desks
- Stop talking
- Start the Do Now
- As students enter. If you’re standing at the door, you can say the same phrase repeatedly: Books open, start the Do Now straight away. Silence in one minute. You can also narrate the positive: Good to see the front row 100% started already.
Give a time frame/narrate the countdown. One minute is probably enough time to get in and get started. You could use timer for this as the lesson starts but I find this a bit faffy. Instead, stand at the door to start with and reiterate instructions with the timeframe. 45 seconds until silence with everyone starting the Do Now. 20 seconds – great to see so many of you started.
When you start this timer depends on how children arrive at your class. For example, if they arrive in one big group then you can start right away. If they arrive gradually (but not late), you can wait until you reach a certain time/quantity of students.
Challenge non-completion. To be able to challenge non-completion, you need to know about it. Teachers who are generally good at circulating and checking during the lesson sometimes miss non-completion in the starter (I’m talking about myself as much as anyone else).
Stay at the front of the room and scan. Make sure you’ve got what you want. Then circulate and actually check that the Do Now is being completed. Every student who is not completing it can have a gentle nudge like When I come back I need to see the first two questions attempted (but make sure you actually come back and check or ask them to hold up their book).
Completing the first task on mini-whiteboards is one way to tackle this because students will be more aware they will be held to account for their answers.
Students need to be sanctioned for not completing the first task if they have the warning and continue not to do it (and you know they can).
Potential Problem # 2 Students are late to the lesson
This:
- Disrupts the lesson.
- Makes it harder for those students to engage with the lesson.
Possible Solutions
There’s tension between sanctioning the late student and getting into an argument or conversation that is going to disrupt the lesson. Asking ‘Why are you late?’ loudly and immediately as a student comes into the room will generally disrupt your lesson.
Instead, you could:
- Use a calm, quiet phrase to indicate there’s a consequence for being late. ‘Jake, that’s a late detention. It’s 6 minutes past 10.’
- Insisting that there isn’t a discussion – ‘You can talk to me about why you were late at the end of the lesson. If you continue to disrupt the Do Now, you’ll be choosing a warning.’
- Narrating the positive/Thanking students for complying.
Decide what late students will need to complete in the first task. It’s better to give a clear expectation that they will complete something than just to let them write the title/date and wait for the lesson to start.
For example:
- If you have a retrieval starter that has a mixture of past and recent content, you could focus students on the recent content questions. This has drawbacks, particularly for students who are late regularly so don’t have to retrieve further content from past lessons.
- Focus on the first questions, usually the easier ones, so that students experience success early. Again, there are problems with students feeling they have a pass to arrive late and do less work; there should still be a consequence.
- As you can see, there aren’t easy wins here but there are different rationales for selecting different questions from the Do Now. Once you’ve made your expectation clear you can thank those getting on with it and use the behaviour policy for any not completing work.
The above should work if you are consistent and firm and your school has a system that sanctions lateness in some way. If the system isn’t in place, it makes it harder for the above to be effective.
Potential Problem #3 Students are slow collecting resources, perhaps disrupting the start of the lesson.
Possible Solutions
Where possible, reduce student responsibility for handing out resources by:
- Handing out books and resources before the lesson (on piles at the end of rows is fine).
- Getting students into the routine of passing books down rows by a. practising it and repeating if you’re not happy and b. narrating expectation clearly.
It might feel like low expectations to remove a responsibility from students but I’d argue our expectation here is to get students working hard as quickly as possible. If you want students to take ownership of handing out resources at the start of lessons, it’s worth spending time defining the routine and then practising it with the class.
You can prepare for this earlier by:
- Arranging books by row or table. Make it part of your morning/afternoon routine to sort/check these for the day/following day.
- Put any resources with the relevant books at the start of the day.
- Put piles of books on rows/tables at the start of the lesson.
- Prompt students to pass books down rows before sitting down.
- Narrate the positive.
- When students hand books in at the end, do the reverse and collect them in rows so that they stay like this.
In most schools I’ve worked in, students have just come into the room when they arrive (largely because of space in corridors). This works well in that set up because books should be out before the class have arrived and those arriving later should arrive to a room where peers are already working. It should also work where students line up outside and then come in (as you should have thirty seconds to put books out on rows etc).
Peter Foster 