Different types of starter activities serve different ends when it comes to managing behaviour.

Thinking about this when planning your lessons can help you to plan for excellent behaviour.

Here are some examples.

Settling Starter Activities

These activities settle learners, calming them and getting them to quickly focus on their learning.

They tend to do this by setting an accessible, individual task that draws learners’ attention.

For example, we might ask learners to write a paragraph explaining their views on a topic, or to make a list of everything they remember from the previous lesson.

Encouraging an individual focus means discouraging off-task behaviour and drawing learners into the culture you want.

Exciting Starter Activities

These activities immediately engage learners and make them feel excited about being in the lesson.

They are particularly good if you want to motivate a class and create a sense of positive momentum.

This makes them useful if learners are lethargic or apathetic.

Examples include posing an unusual problem or question and giving a two-minute time limit in which learners must develop a response with a partner; competitive or team-based games; and using an arresting image as a stimulus for paired discussion.

Routinized Starter Activities

Another approach involves routinizing your starter activities.

This sees you developing a set routine that you embed in all your starter activities, and which serves to bind learners into the lesson through familiarity and recourse to past behaviour.

For example, you might develop a routine by which learners come in, copy down the lesson title, learning objective and key question, remind themselves of their current target and then attempt the starter activity.

The obvious benefit of this approach is that it habituates learners into a way of acting that is learning-focussed, giving you a chance to control the direction and atmosphere of the lesson from the outset.

Repeated Starter Activities

We can also bring the benefits of habituation to bear in terms of the activities we use.

Identifying a suite of starters that help you to achieve the learning you want means you can then train learners in how to respond to these starters.

Over time, learners will come to recognise the activity types and will be predisposed to interact with them based on their prior experience.

This can help get your lessons off to a cleaner, quicker start.

The aim, then, is to give thought to the starter activities you plan, considering how these will influence your learners, as well as the kind of lesson starts they will engender.

The above list presents but a small clutch of activities you can use to start your lessons.

The point, though, is to recognise that starters can play a key role in setting the tone in your lessons, helping you manage behaviour effectively.

How can facilitating success have such a big impact on learners?

One way to use starter activities to promote positive behaviour is by using them to facilitate learners’ success.

Success is motivational.

It gives us a sense of achievement and helps promote a positive mindset.

One that says: ‘well we did that, so presumably we can do more too.’

For these reasons, ensuring all learners can experience success in your starter activities is an excellent technique through which to promote engagement and a good start to your lessons.

It binds learners into the learning, giving them a positive, motivational experience from the word go.

Of course, we do not want to make our starter activities so simple that they lack challenge.

Finding a balance is key.

An easy way to do this is to plan a two-part starter activity.

Part one should be based on the first two levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge and comprehension.

Part two should be more challenging and therefore based on one of the higher levels (application, analysis, synthesis or evaluation).

Here is an example from a Year 11 Psychology lesson introducing learners to the topic of learning:

• Starter Activity: Make a list of every word that comes to mind when you hear the term ‘learning.’ Try to include some scientific and psychological words on your list. (Part one.)
• Challenge Question: Is learning possible without memory? Why? (Part two.)

Here, the main starter activity is predicated on knowledge and comprehension.

We are asking learners to recall things they already know and to do so by thinking about the concept of ‘learning.’

This is accessible for all, based on prior experience, and allows everyone in the class to be successful and, therefore, to feel that they are a part of the lesson.

The challenge question is more demanding.

Perhaps half the class will get onto it, perhaps all of them.

Either way, learners will have their thinking stretched on top of having the opportunity to experience immediate success.

Thus, we achieve our twin aims of creating motivation at the same time as we challenge learners to think in depth about the topic.

You can apply this model to nearly any topic and age group.