For anyone at this time of year, starting to plan for September may seem like a hard task! However, if you do it now… then it will aid your organisation for the new term! How about including some new starters to get students thinking when they come into the classroom after the summer holidays?
Thunks
These are questions that make you think. Challenge the students with some interesting questions in their first lesson, such as: ‘Should a business be focused on being ethical or increasing profits’ or ‘To what extent is market domination key in the technology industry?’
Last person standing
Using the mini white boards or true and false cards would be great for this, or use a PowerPoint or a list of questions and keep going until there is only one person standing- the winner! You could then do a similar thing as a plenary, including questions from the start and those topics covered in the lesson.
60 Second Challenge
This is great for short lessons when you want to get the students focused quickly. Use the SMART board again to time a 60 second activity and get the task to disappear after 60 seconds ready for students to feed back any idea to you.
Tweet Last lesson
Twitter style handouts could be given to students as they enter the room, they are then asked to update them based on their knowledge from the last lesson. How can they sum up the last lesson in 140 characters?
News flash
This again is great to get students to focus as soon as they enter the room. You can get students to work in pairs/small groups to work on a 60 second news flash of what they learnt last lesson. You can then ask the groups to present to the class instead of you doing the recap with them.
How can you link it to the A level course?
These starters can be used at any point of the course…
For example…
- Thunks or the 60 second challenge could be used to start the course in September, getting students to think about business in general. Or even specific industries – such as to what extent is it acceptable for the pharmaceutical industry to behave unethically?
In September why don’t you try giving some of the above a try… and read the extra support articles below.
Written by Donna Jestin
Further reading
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2011/oct/17/guide-perfect-starter-teaching
Starters and plenaries, by Harry Dodds and Lorna Smith
http://teachfind.com/national-strategies/pedagogy-and-practice-study-guides-5-starters-and-plenaries
