8.1 Starting lessons

When I arrive in class to start my lessons, it often takes a long time to get students to quieten down and pay attention.

Aim

To make the starts of lessons more effective and engaging.

Introduction

The beginning of a lesson is crucial. You usually want to set a good atmosphere, re-establish contact with your students and then get onto the important work of the lesson as quickly, efficiently and enjoyably as possible. If something goes wrong at this stage, it can affect all the rest of the lesson.

Teachers use different terms to talk about these sorts of activities:

• • Lead-ins are part of a single flow connected to your main lesson focus. So, for example, if your lesson has the aim that ‘students will be better able to use Conditional Type Two’, your lead-in would be something that directly ‘leads into’ and starts that part of the lesson.

• • Lesson starts or ‘warmers’ are slightly different. They are typically stand-alone and outside the main flow of the lesson and usually have very different aims, i.e. often group-building rather than linguistic (though this is not to say that a cleverly planned lesson start couldn't segue neatly into the main flow!).

• • ‘Icebreakers’ are activities used right at the start of a course to help a new class of students get to know each other and feel more comfortable working together. They might include ‘Getting to know you’ activities and name games (often involving mingling), where students meet and talk to a large number of other students.