Have a task on the board before they sit down
The first two minutes set the temperature of the whole lesson. Don't spend them taking attendance while thirty people wait.
Jul 31, 2026 · 1 min read
A short, doable task that's visible from the doorway (three retrieval questions, a "spot the error", one sentence to improve) means students start working on entry instead of waiting for the lesson to begin. It converts the messiest minutes of the hour into practice, and it makes "we start immediately" the room's default.
In practice
- Same format every day, so no instructions are needed: they sit, they start.
- Keep it self-contained and low-stakes. Answerable from memory, no books to fetch, wrong answers cost nothing.
- Do the admin during the starter, then review it briskly: two minutes, cold call a couple of answers, move on.
- Retrieval from last week beats a preview of today. Testing memory strengthens it more than restudying does (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), and beginning lessons with a short review of prior learning is the first of Rosenshine's (2012) principles of instruction.
Quick takeaway: the lesson starts when they cross the door, or it starts late.