1. With very young students, start with saying exactly what you are doing that day. Keep it simple. Today we are painting! Usually that is enough of a hook to get them excited or enthusiastic!! Today we are using clay!!
2. With older students, I always greet them at the door, and usually it is enough for them to see me in my apron--they know we are doing something messy that day. Then, I remind them to leave jackets in a special spot and put on a paint shirt on the way to their seat.
3. I try to keep my 'lecturing' to a minimum on messy days so that we have plenty of time for clean up. I try to break down the lesson into essentials to minimize the amount of information that I try to squeeze in at the beginning.
4. For older students, I point out the objective at the beginning of the unit. Then, if it is a project where I am giving them a lot of freedom, I have success criteria posted, and I try to make a visual and oral reference to those expectations. If it is a specific skill, I take the time to model or I make a video of myself modeling the skill and show it at the beginning of class.
5. Bell ringers/Do Now/Seat work---an activity that students do right when they enter. This really helps the flow of the lesson. Sometimes it is a review or a warm up. It extends or connects the learning or it asks an essential question.
6. I use lots of either Brain Pop or You Tube videos. (this links to my channel)

1. Word wall or graffiti wall (sticky notes)
2. Teach like a Pirate--mystery hook bag
3. Comic strip--draw a comic strip to explain what we are learning
4. Show a cartoon and analyze
5. Would you rather??
6. Step-by-step drawing on the board--art projects for kids has great ideas!
7. Read a story
8. Read a poem
9. Think pair share--have students rephrase what someone else in their group said; teacher rephrases what students say to reinforce vocabulary
10. 3.2.1. three things they learned, two unexpected things, one question they have
11. VTS with a work of art
12. Comic strip---create 3 or 4 comic strip panels to illustrate learning goal
13. Use Socratic questioning
14. Practice block lettering---write SKETCH BOOK in block letters on the board, great warm up
15. Show and tell--use a prop from a story students are about to read. Use a leaf, I have a rubber ear from Nasco, a mummified cat, scorpion in resin, king tut figurine, nutcracker, table full of 'artifacts'.
16. Transform the room--co-teacher puts up images to completely transform the learning space to make it themed withe unit
17. Learning centers with special materials--tell about those first
18. When I was a little girl----these stories stick with kids
19. Props--wear a kimono or special clothing for the unit. Cassie is the queen!
20. Use a visual-- tell students they have 30 seconds to memorize everything about a painting. Ask students to recall everything they can remember.
21. Tell a joke, play a song, give a scenario, act it out.

1. Line games---find the shapes around the room, find different types of lines, turn your body in to a line. Great for kinesthetic and visual learners.
2. Leaf poem--interactive (give everyone a leaf so they can act it out)
3. Unexpected statement--Today we are going to scribble! (Good for scratch art, when doing rubbings or creating texture papers). Today we ain't gonna paint no more!

Kindergarten--2nd grade
4-5 Minutes

3rd-5th grade
5-7 Minutes

6-8th grade
7-10 minutes

9-12th grade
9-12 minutes

- The Lure : What’s the hook that you’ll be using to lure pupils into learning? Not every lesson will have a lure, but in our experience teaching at KS2 it’s fun to look for opportunities to lay what Hywel Roberts calls ‘learning traps’. For instance, the hook in an ‘Earth, Sun and Moon’ Science lesson could be a fake e-mail from NASA, getting the facts about day and night completely wrong. ‘Oops’ describes this sort of thing wonderfully as digging a hole and covering it with branches. The better the hook or the more relevant it is, the more motivated your pupils will be.
- ‘Stickability’ : This is what Ross Morrison McGill describes as: “What will stick in pupils’ minds as they leave your lesson? What key point(s) do you want them to remember?“
- Questions : What key questions will help you to lure pupils into learning? As ‘Oops’ states, make sure they are “high, open and fat” questions to get pupils talking and stimulate questions of their own. Use a question grid to help frame higher-order questions. Where possible, use the Pose Pause Pounce Bounce AfL strategy to stimulate discussion.

This Little Class of Mine

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