Take Five
31 Starters
31 A good breakfast by Alison Powell
Al Powell is an English, Drama and Media teacher, a Forest School
leader and a world record holder
It’s a well-known fact that a good breakfast is an important part of a
healthy lifestyle. Think of your starter activities as the ‘breakfast’ for
your lessons – make them fresh (not fruity!) and your students will be
set for the rest of the session.
Al’s five favourite ‘no-prep’ starters
1
Odd one out: write three words connected to your topic on the board and invite
students to think of reasons why each item could be ‘odd’. For example, if your trio
is Romeo, Juliet and Mercutio, reasons could be: Juliet is the only girl; Mercutio is the
only one who doesn’t get married; Romeo is the only one without a ‘t’ in his name.
2
Write your topic on the board and invite students to jot down on Post-it® notes
any questions they have about that topic. Stick the notes on the board and
hopefully, during the course of the lesson, these questions will be answered. They can
also be revisited as part of your plenary.
3
4
Ask students to create a still image (or two) based on a theme/heading/
relationship connected with your topic.
Students form an opinion line as they enter the classroom based on the extent
to which they agree or disagree with a statement about your topic. (You can also
use this to organise students into groups for the lesson.)
5
Using social media conventions, challenge students to write a message from the
point of view of a certain character or to summarise a topic. Limit the message to
140 characters in length.
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
205
Take Five
31 Starters
Whizzy and web-based ideas
Good starters:
Teachit’s whizzies make great starter activities.
I particularly like Cruncher. Type in a poem or
section of text and instantly create a word bank.
You can use it to set all kinds of great starter tasks. Ask students to
use the word bank to write their own poems, or to sort words into
groups. This is a good way to introduce your group to new language
before examining the text as a whole.
1. connect the learning –
either to the last lesson or to
the one that’s about to begin
Pop key sentences or phrases into Choptalk for a challenging
start to your lesson. The tool will chop up and rearrange
sentences for students to piece back together. It’s fantastic for
newspaper headlines!
3. are ready for students to
tuck into as you’re taking the
register
1
Try Word Whiz as a fun starter for creative writing topics. The
Title Whiz tool randomly generates titles for stories. Give it a
spin to get your students going!
2
3
4
5
Google images is the perfect place to find inspiring and
intriguing images to kick-start discussion on all sorts of topics.
For some clever interactive tools try www.readwritethink.org.
As well as a word of the day, you’ll find word-based activities,
fabulous etymological facts and more at http://dictionary.
reference.com/.
2. offer an achievable
challenge. Make them too
easy or difficult and your
students will lose interest.
4. might establish what
students already know and
what they need to learn
5. are a part of your classroom
routine.
See the site
Find the editable
resources, links, interactive
materials and special
versions of Magnet,
Cruncher and Syntex
at www.teachit.co.uk/
takefive
Tip!
Teachit has plenty of
matching activities available
for terminology revision and
more. These are online tools
that allow students to drag
and match words
and phrases.
206
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
Take Five
31 Starters
Al’s top starter resource
1
(4433) Poetic terms bingo
How it works
This starter activity is an
old favourite. It offers a
grid of poetic terms that
can be printed, laminated
and reused. There are also
two pages of cards with
sample sentences. Students
compete in groups of four to
identify which literary term
is being used.
This activity can easily be
differentiated or adapted for
different topics. It’s useful
for reminding students
about previous lessons and
for establishing confidence
levels with a topic.
Five things to try
1
Add an extra challenge by inviting students to write their own
sample sentences for another group to use.
2
For an even livelier version of this activity, enlarge the bingo cards
and display them around the classroom. Then distribute sets of
sample sentences to pairs or groups and ask them to race to match the
sentences to the appropriate terms.
3
Get students to explain the effects of the sample sentences and to
consider when and why different literary techniques are particularly
effective.
4
Use a text to accompany this starter, asking students to find
examples of each literary term.
5
Play the game the other way around: give each student a selection
of six sample sentences and call out the literary terms from the
bingo card. The first student to find them all is the winner!
And four more choice starters
2
(4432) What am I?
A lively way to consolidate knowledge of parts of speech is by turning it into a
game. Use this resource as inspiration: students pick a card with a part of speech written
on it and hold it to their forehead (without reading it!). Other members of the group then give examples
of that term until the student correctly identifies it. You could easily adapt this resource to include any
terminology that your topic requires (or use it for poetic devices).
3
(1415a) Self-mark starters
These are a selection of quick and quiet activities based on punctuation and spelling. Many students
love the straightforward challenge of the correction exercise and it makes for a good lead in to AfL work.
4
(5656) Curley’s wife – do we sympathise with her?
Encourage students to think about the wider issues surrounding a topic by getting them to organise
a list of opinion statements into rank order. This resource is a lovely example and also offers a whizzy
version. You could ask students to generate their own list of statements on a chosen topic before arranging
them into a diamond ranking or opinion line.
5
(ishprol) Romeo and Juliet – star cross’d lovers
A good old sequencing task always gets brains going at the start of a lesson! Try using a paper or
whizzy version of this resource. After students have completed the task, follow with a discussion about how
they did it, rather than just checking whether or not they got it right. The ‘how’ questions should lead to
good explanations of rhyme schemes, connectives and logic.
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
207
Take Five
31 Starters
The photocopiable resource – (4433) Poetic terms bingo
Aims:
To practise recognition of similes, metaphors, alliteration and onomatopoeia.
Materials:
Each set of the materials below is sufficient for a group of four students. The teacher should:
1.Make four photocopies of the A4 paper containing the words of ‘similes’, ‘metaphors’,
‘alliteration’ and ‘onomatopoeia’. Then laminate. These will now be called bingo
sheets.
2.Laminate then cut up the other cards that contain examples. These will now be called
example cards.
Instructions
1.Teacher puts students into groups of four.
2.Students A, B and C have one bingo sheet each. Student D has the pile of example
cards.
3.Student D shouts out the example phrase on the first card. Students A, B and C
compete with each other to correctly identify the terminology. The fastest student
with the correct answer gets the card and then lays it down on top of the relevant
square on the bingo sheet.
4.The first student to cover all the words shouts, ‘Bingo!’ and wins the game.
N.B.: if a student has, for example, covered all the ‘alliteration’ on the bingo sheet, they
must still compete to get the next alliteration that comes up in order to deprive the other
students of an opportunity to win.
208
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
Take Five
31 Starters
simile
metaphor
alliteration
onomatopoeia
simile
metaphor
alliteration
onomatopoeia
simile
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
209
Take Five
31 Starters
She’s as small as
a mouse.
He’s a pig.
They’re bad boys.
The water
dripped.
She’s like a pig
in clover.
You have a heart
of stone.
The swan swam
slowly.
The baby splashed
in the bath.
He’s as good as
gold.
210
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
Take Five
31 Starters
He’s as tall as a
house.
She’s got a
heart of gold.
Tiny Tim is sad.
The gun
went bang!
She’s as thin
as a rake.
She’s got
blue blood.
What a dreary
day!
The cork
popped out
of the bottle.
Your hair is like
soft silk.
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
211
Take Five
31 Starters
Your hair is as
soft as silk.
My heart’s
broken.
The train tooted
down the track.
Hush!
Her new dress is
as white as snow.
I’m on top of
the world!
The dog howled.
She’s as happy
as Larry.
He eats like a pig.
212
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
Take Five
31 Starters
This computer
is a dinosaur.
The horse
neighed.
She sings like
an angel.
She’s an angel.
Peter Piper
packed his bag.
Your eyes are
as green as
emeralds.
2012 Teachit (UK) Ltd
213