Why? The start of a lesson is extremely important for engaging students and getting them ‘hooked’ on the learning that is about to take place. It’s tough to do on a consistent basis. It needs lots of creativity from the teacher when planning the lesson and requires the teacher to know their students.

Below is a summary of a #UKEdChat hosted on Twitter earlier this year with contributions by teachers from around the UK.

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Date of UKEdChat: Thursday 5th September 2013

Host: Jon Tait @TeamTait

Topics discussed:

What is your number 1 starter activity for engaging students as soon as they walk through your door?

What is the 1 routine in your classroom that you couldn’t live without?

Which top tip from tonight’s discussion are you going to use tomorrow?

Notable Tweets:

@teachertonytips Engaging question on a slip of paper given to kids in the queue outside classroom.
@gceyre A Mystery – keep the students guessing and wanting to find out more.
@with_ict Must work harder after assembly. Kids hold it together during and are often in need of an active exciting task afterwards.
@with_ict After lunch register, response is giving a number out of 10 to show mood/feeling. It gives a good indication of playground drama.
@georgeEblack After lunch, sympathise with them (who isn’t sleepy after lunch) have shorter tasks prepared, plan accordingly, build in down time.

Tweet of the Week:

@ReachPsychology Be mindful that some Friday afternoon non-engagement behaviours are not about your lesson. Not every pupil loves the weekend!

Resource: 

Engaging starter tweets – Archive supplied by @ukedchat. Contains lots of ideas for engaging starters!!

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Post submitted by:

@ukedchat

UKEdChat’s site

#neverstoplearning

Feedback. Please let us know how any of these engaging starters worked for you and your students. Leave a comment on this post or tweet us at @nslhub.