Make the first question one everyone gets right

Students decide fast whether today is a day they can do this, and the first question they attempt is most of the evidence. Bandura (1997) made mastery experiences the strongest source of self-efficacy: nothing convinces a student they can succeed like just having succeeded. So sequence for it. Open practice sets with a question the weakest student in the room will get right, then ramp. This is not lowering the bar; the hard questions are still coming. It is buying the persistence the hard questions will need (see "Have a task on the board before they sit down").

In practice

Here is tomorrow's practice set for [year group]
[subject], topic: [topic].
[paste questions]
Reorder and adjust it into a confidence ramp:
1. Q1 must be answerable by every student in the room
   (recall of the core idea, no traps).
2. Difficulty rises in small steps, no cliffs.
3. The final question stretches the strongest student.
Flag any gap in the ramp where a bridging question is
missing, and write that question.

• Put the guaranteed win first and make it real content rather than a giveaway; retrieval of last lesson's key idea works well.
• Ramp difficulty in small steps across the set; a cliff at question two undoes the win at question one.
• Name the trajectory out loud: everyone starts scoring today, and question eight is going to stretch everyone.
• For a student on a failure streak, engineer the win publicly: a question you know they own, asked where the class can hear the right answer.