[Lesley Ann]

I read this on the Learning Bulletin that school distributes to staff to improve teaching and learning:

Register and starter in one

It says that calling a register at the start of the lesson is NOT a good idea, unless it incorporates a starter activity. (from Mike Hughes book 'Tweaking to Transform')

And so the bulletin suggested:

As you call each name in the register students have to give a keyword on the topic being studied instead of answering 'here' etc:



So I used this idea with Y11 today...but said I wanted a different word from each one, no repeats.

I also tried it with my Y7 form...asking for keywords for the topics they are studying from the classes they were to have today...(again I wanted no repeat words) I would then guess what 5 lessons they were going too. They are going to repeat this exercise tomorrow!

[johnwayne]

love it - will give this a try with my small y10 class - thanks!

[A Finemess]

That would be 30 key words then?

[Lesley Ann]

A Finemess, on 06 November 2009 - 11:38 PM, said:

That would be 30 key words then?

not just key words....words related to the topics they are covering.....events, people, places, keywords...Y11 were looking at the Cold War and did this with ease, faster than the normal 'here Miss' and it made them focus and think!

[JohnDClare]

This is brilliant - it uses what otherwise would be 'dead' time.

I am sure that there are any number of variants, and you can us them as brilliant revision strategies with GCSE students:
One character from our studies of ...
One fact about ...
One date ...
One law...
One organisation...

And if you are going to merge the roll-call with your starter, there are even more possibilities; for example, you might not take the register immediately, but - if you were studying a picture for your starter - give the pupils 3 minutes to study the picture, and then when you took the register they had to offer one thing they had seen.

Equally, you could merge it with research homeworks - those homeworks where you send the class away to find out so-many facts about <a topic>. Set a homework asking for as many answers as students in the class, and they have to give their answer when you call out their name.


The most brilliant thign about it is that it forces EVERY pupil to say something; none of them can hide or avoid answering or say that they don;t like speaking up in front of the others.

[Nick Dennis]

Will be deployed on Monday!

[Dan Moorhouse]

Would work really well with anachronisms. English Heritage gave out loads of tampered with photos at SHP last year which would enable it - have them ready to pick up on entry, start the register and ask each pupil to spot the anachronism. Not everyone would be able to spot one, and there aren;t enough included for a full class, but it'd get the whole lot of them thinking!

[Lesley Ann]

Thank you for your extra ideas John and Dan


This is what I love about this forum...you put a little idea out and it snowballs!

[debra g]

what a brilliant idea - I wish I'd thought of doing it! At my placement school last year, the teacher kept homework records with the register - i.e. if they had it they would say 'yes and yes' and if not they had to explain why (briefly) and the teacher would follow up afterwards if necessary. But I think this idea is great too - it gets them thinking straightaway and they have to listen!