What if classroom-based lessons typically began with a pre-starter activity for students to do? Would that be a good thing, a bad thing, or just unnecessary? This blog explains what I mean by ‘pre-starter’ and considers some pros and cons.
In most secondary schools, perhaps all, lessons begin with a starter activity, designed to refresh students’ memory of the subject/topic being studied, review previous key ‘learning’, and/or perhaps introduce the main activities to come in the lesson. The starter is typically done once all students are there, seated and ready to start. A ‘pre-starter’ is different; as its name indicates, it happens before the starter. Pre-starters aren’t common in secondary schools, in my experience, unless the teacher sets their starter-quiz as the thing students should be doing as soon as they are ready – some teachers do that routinely.
A pre-starter typically involves the teacher writing a very brief activity for students to do on the whiteboard, which students should get on with as soon as they arrive and are ready. It will usually be an activity that doesn’t require teacher explanation, so that the teacher can meet and greet the students arriving and deal with any immediate issues or queries. Since students often arrive at the lesson at different times in secondary schools – because they often come from different lessons and places – there can be as much as five minutes between the arrival of the first and last student – which is why the question has come up.
It would also be perfectly possible to for students to do the pre-starter in silence, to minimise distractions and maximise focus, although insisting on silence can create its own issues (see ‘cons’ below).
Some cons of pre-starters
They require planning; doing them will increase teacher workload, unless the teacher uses the prepared starter quiz as their pre-starter get-on-with activity.
If done as a separate activity, they can’t involve any new learning, as some students – those arriving last, for example – would be likely to miss out.
If the teacher is greeting everyone and getting ready for the lesson, they can’t be helping anyone with the pre-starter; this may be problematic, if students get stuck.
Requiring pre-starters could be, or be seen to be, prescriptive, reducing teachers’ autonomy over how their lessons begin.
If the teacher insisted on silence during the pre-starter, this could create a behaviour management challenge before the lesson has even begun.
Some pros of pre-starters
They increase learning time: an additional couple of minutes every lesson adds up to a lot of additional learning time over a year.
They provide an orderly start to all classroom-based lessons: by the time the teacher comes to do the starter, all students should already be focused. If pre-starters were a well-established routine in the school, this would be especially helpful to new teachers and those who are less experienced.
Pre-starters help students tune in to the subject right at the start of the lesson.
So, are pre-starters a good thing? I think that whatever we call it, some way of ensuring students are engaged from the point when they arrive to the lesson and are ready is a good thing. Over time, they reduce ‘dead time’ and add significantly to students’ time spent in learning a subject.
