As we move into a new year, I have just started my 8th year of mentoring PGCE students as well as NQTs. It occurs to me every year I try and impart pearls of wisdom, however, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I may overload them with information. So for the first time, I am going to try and get down some of my ideas about how to get the most out of your classroom.
The starter is the part of the
lesson when you can establish how the rest of the lesson is going to
proceed. During your starter you can
establish:
- Your expectations of students during the lesson
- How you expect the students to behave during the lesson
- What the lesson is about
Your expectations
The most important part of any
lesson is setting your expectations high and ensuring that students are aware
of them from the start of the lesson. If
your expectations of the students are low, then their expectations of
themselves will also be low, which in turn will have a negative effect on their
progress & attainment. Having high
expectations will see you through most problems during the lesson not just the
start, as students 9 times out of 10 will rise to the challenge of meeting
them. You can establish high
expectations in a few ways. The easiest
way of doing this is to relate student’s attitudes in lessons to progress and
to keep reminding them that if they have high expectations of themselves their
progress will be greater.
The second easiest way to
demonstrate your high expectations is to be overly zealous about your
expectations of their uniform and how they look. If students come into your room looking scruffy
then they won’t be in the correct mindset to engage with the lesson
content. Either as students are lining
up or as they come into the room remind them about their uniform. It may be an uphill battle at the start, but
it’s worth it in the long run. One
phrase that I’ve heard a lot over the years is ‘break them with the uniform’
and it’s true. Set your expectations of
their uniform high and it will help you avoid a range of problems further into
the lesson.
Student behaviour at the start of the lesson
Student behaviour needs to be
established from the start of the lesson.
Remember, it’s much easier establishing your expectations of behaviour
than reacting to it if something goes wrong.
Behaviour needs to start outside of the room. If students are messing around and being loud
when they are lining up, it’s likely that this behaviour will continue when
they come into your room. The key to
getting students to come into the room quietly, in the right frame of mind to
work is to address the behaviour when they are lining up. It might feel like an uphill battle at first,
but getting students lining up quietly and entering in the right frame of mind
will pay dividends in the long run.
Once students have entered the
room one of the main keys to maintaining good behaviour is routine & being
organised. If you spend the start of the
lesson running around trying to sort out what you are doing, students will pick
up and exploit it. As far as routine
goes it’s pretty much down to personal preference. Some of the things that I have either used or
have seen other members of staff use are:
- Making sure that students know that they need to have their equipment and planers out at the start of the lesson. Never assume that students will automatically get these things out without being prompted
- Make sure that your lesson title and key words are up on the board for students to get down as soon as they enter the room.
- You might want to put up a prompt or enquiry question that they need to think about and discuss after
What the lesson is about
The start of your lesson should
establish what your lesson is about.
Traditionally at some point during the start of the lesson you share the
lesson objectives or outcomes with your students. As with all aspects of lesson planning, there
are a few ways of doing this. You can
- Wait until you have finished whatever your starter activity and simply tell the students
- You can with some guidance get students to come up with their own objectives
- If you are using an inquiry question, you could discuss it with students or get students to discuss it between themselves
- You can design a starter activity that will enable students to work out the lesson objectives
Once you have considered the
points above it’s time to start thinking about what you are going to do and
include within your starter activity. Some
important things to think about when planning a starter activity are
- Does your activity relate to your objectives? If the answer is no, start again
- Will your starter activity be accessible to all students? If the answer is no, start again
- Is your activity going to excite the students about what they will be doing during the lesson? If the answer is no, start again
Remember, if students are bored
during your starter activity then there’s not much chance of improving their
opinion later in the lesson. One phrase
that is often banded about when talking about starters is ‘you have to hook the
students’. Whilst I am not a great lover
of his phrase you do need to do something in your starter that will make
students sit up and notice what they are going to be doing. Below I have outlined some ideas of things to
do during your starter
Information Hunt
The information hunt requires
students going around the room collecting information on some sort of lesson
content. The main problem with this
method is, how to stop students just going around copying the information. Remember, students can copy information
without actually taking it in. One of
the ways that you can use to get past this problem is to stop students taking
their books or whatever they are writing on around with them. If students have to find the information ten
go back to their seats to write it down, they will have to remember it, and
will be more likely to summarise. Once
students have gathered the information they need to do something with it. You can get students explaining the
information to each other, answer a long answer question using the information
or simply direct questions to certain students to assess what they have taken
in.
Literacy Question Board Games
The basis of every literacy game
is finding the right lesson content for students to read to enable them to
access the rest of the lesson. The trick
is to give students something relevant to read whilst not being too long as
this runs the risk of turning students off at the start of the lesson. With all literacy board games, you need to
set out a board game but include a range of questions based on what they have
just read. After your students have
competed the game, ask them at random questions from the game to ensure that
they have worked through it.
Youtube
Sometimes you might be able to
find an appropriate video to grab students interest. If you are using this as a starter you need
to ensure that the video is not too long and relevant to the lesson objectives
Exam Question WABOLLs
One way to get students looking
at how to answer exam questions, especially longer answer questions, is to give
them an answer with a mark scheme and get them to mark it. One key things to bear in mind is that
students at first, won’t have a clue how to do this, so at first you will need
to lead students through how to mark an exam question using a mark scheme. When carrying this type of starter out either
write one or a series of answers to an exam question, ensuring that they have
some obvious or mistakes that students often make in them. Once you have your activity set up you need
to follow the following few steps
- Make sure students have read the question
- Make sure they read the mark scheme next
- Get students to highlight or underline parts of the answer that they would give marks for
- Ask students to look out for SPAG
- Get students to total up how many marks they would give is
- Discuss with students why they have given the question the amount of marks they have
Key Word Starter Games
Every year when the examiner’s
report comes out, one of the main reasons that student’s lose marks is lack of or
incorrect use of key words. There are a
few ways that you can use key words at the start of the lesson.
- Putting the key words up on the board at the start of the lesson and either asking the students to get them down so they build up a list of key words over the year, or discussing what these key words mean can be useful
- Making some sort of board game based on key words including questions on their use & meanings
- Key word scrabble
- Key word card sorts
Using Role Play
Using role play is one of the more novel ways to start a lesson. It can be very effective however, it does come with a bit of a health and safety warning. Although this can be a very engaging way to start a lesson, don't try it until you've nailed the behaviour management. Some of the things I've done with role play are:
- Getting students to make a large digestive system where different groups of students represent different organs
- Getting students to represent different types of plant cells and building them up into the structure of the leaf
- Having students pretending to be atoms and using them to represent different states of matter
With this method there are loads of different things you can do, just give it a go.
I hope that some of my musings have helped. Any feedback or stories of things you have given a go would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading
Chalky
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