More tips from Craig Barton
Video transcript
hello i’m craig barton and welcome to this tips for teachers video the do now and what on earth is to do now well this is what the cool kids these days are calling what i’ve always called the starter in other words it’s what happens at the start of your lessons and i think that do now can serve three main purposes the first is it could be used to assess prerequisite knowledge or it could be a retrieval opportunity or it could be a settler let’s dive into each of these so to assess prerequisite knowledge so the idea here is that whatever we’re about to teach our students a new idea we want to ensure that the building blocks are secure enough that we can then build that new idea upon it so for example imagine i’m about to teach my students how to calculate the area of a circle i think about all the things that my students need to be really confident and competent on in order to have the best chance of learning this new idea one of them might be rounding so i may choose my do now to ask a diagnostic question to assess my student’s understanding of rounding or instead i may choose to group together this prerequisite knowledge and maybe my students will answer in their books or our mini whiteboards and we’ll do a bit of peer assessment or self-assessment just to check those building blocks are in place so that’s one purpose of the do now alternatively it may be used as a retrieval opportunity and crucially it may be an opportunity to re for students to retrieve knowledge for things that they’ve learned in the past that aren’t necessarily related to the content of the lesson coming up now why on earth would we do this because there’s so much research out there that suggests it’s a really really good idea to keep providing students opportunities to retrieve things they’ve studied in the past so a really popular and i think really good structure for doing this is the classic last lesson last topic last term last year so students are given a question based on something they’ve done really recently something a bit longer ago in the past something last term and then something last year and this fits really nicely into what we know about memory how as soon as we’ve encountered something for the first time we want to provide that first retrieval opportunity pretty quickly and then space things out over time so i really like that the third purpose of a do now is just simply it’s a settler now this may be because for the things that you as a teacher need to do at the start of lessons you need to take the register and notice our notices out collecting homework or maybe and this is often the case you have students who are arriving really late to lessons so you want to make sure everybody’s present and ready when you start things formally so essentially it’s just something to keep students busy now this is often frowned upon but of course we know practically that sometimes we just need to do these things but here’s the problem what i often see when i’m looking up to visit schools is that the do now almost tries to serve all these purposes it’s a bit of prerequisite knowledge it’s a bit of retrieval and it’s also a bit of a settler so here’s an example of something like this so i was lucky enough to watch this lesson and the instructions given to students were okay first you want to write down the title you want to write down the date copy out your lesson objectives and then i want you to work on this question now this question was kind of related to the lesson that was coming up but it was kind of a bit of retrieval but what was really interesting is not many students actually got on to this because students were spending ages copying out the title copying out the lesson objectives and all that kind of thing and some students were arriving late and then the teacher didn’t have time to go through this in enough detail because some students hadn’t even got on to thinking about the question some students have finished the teachers looking at their watch and so on and so forth and the problem with this of course is is what is this there to achieve is it settling down the students well yeah but it’s also kind of wrapped up as a bit of this and a bit of this as well so here’s my challenge to you um i’ve got three questions for you to ask yourself and there are no right or wrong answers to this but first what is the purpose of your do now does it always serve the same purpose and secondly and i think this is the really interesting one do your students know the purpose because one thing to ask yourself is do students know why you’re doing last lesson last term last week last year do your students know why you’re assessing prerequisite knowledge because i think if they don’t know why you’re doing it then the answer to this third question do your students take the do now seriously is often no i’m i’m lucky enough when i get to see lots of lessons and i see the do now happening i’ll say to students um why do you think you’re doing this or what purpose does this serve and often the t the student will just say that’s just a starter isn’t it and the kids you can see they almost take a bit of a relaxed laid back approach to it but i think if we decide ourselves what the purpose of the do now is and we have a real clear vision of it if we communicate that purpose to the students then they see that we’re taking it seriously so hopefully they start to take it seriously as well and then we can start to either get those prerequisite knowledge benefits or the retrieval benefits that we want to get out and if we have to hold our hands up and say look the purpose of this do now is just to make sure everybody’s there and ready to start the lesson then that’s fine as well so what do you reckon um how do your do nows work do your students take them seriously what are your answers to those three questions if you found this useful can you like the video i’d be eternally grateful if you could subscribe to the tips for teachers youtube channel visit tipsforteachers.com for more tips like this thanks so much for watching
2 replies on “Choose the purpose of your Do Now… and tell your students!”
Excellent advice. I have used the numeracy ninjas booklets and the key skills section of mathsbox.com as my “do now” activities and find that they serve the last two points fairly well. They are mixed topic retrieval that also act as an effective settler.
They follow a clear structure and routine and the use of a timer ensures they are focussed and productive use of lesson time.
Thanks Nick!