Here's an idea for a great differentiated starter activity that your students will love! There is something very exciting about finding a secret envelope hidden under your chair at the start of a lesson...
The concept is simple and easy to implement! Before students come in, tape an envelope to the bottom of their chairs which contains an activity differentiated to their individual level of challenge. For some reason, a regular starter activity is much more exciting when presented as a Secret Mission in their own private 'top secret' envelope..!
Some ideas you could put in your Secret Mission envelopes are:
Many of these could be matching activities with other students in the class - this gets students up and about taking to each other trying to match up their missions! For the more able you could even get them having to match up with a few other people in the room!
This idea is great as it allows you to differentiate the activity, get all students involved and bring an air of excitement and fun into the classroom at the beginning of the lesson!
If you try this out, let me know how it goes in the comments below!
Some ideas you could put in your Secret Mission envelopes are:
- Key words and definitions
- True / false activity
- Sequencing events in order
- Matching novel characters to their quotes
- Matching questions to their answers
- Mistake spotting activity
- Exam questions
Many of these could be matching activities with other students in the class - this gets students up and about taking to each other trying to match up their missions! For the more able you could even get them having to match up with a few other people in the room!
This idea is great as it allows you to differentiate the activity, get all students involved and bring an air of excitement and fun into the classroom at the beginning of the lesson!
If you try this out, let me know how it goes in the comments below!
