Classroom Non-Negotiable Focus: Do-Now Tasks

Beginning this week, the Lyon Academy Instructional Blog will focus a different classroom non-negotiable each week. This week, I will give some further explanation of how to strengthen our Do-Now tasks.

Do-Now tasks can take a variety of forms, but must adhere to the following guidelines:
1. Be a task that students can begin independently upon entering the classroom or transitioning to a new subject.
2. Not exceed 3-5 minutes in duration.
3. Be an independent, pencil to paper activity.
4. Review a skill from previous lessons or anticipate new content in the lesson for the day.

Do-Now tasks must be posted on the BBC daily. In the first image below, Ms. Mosby writes the specific Do-Now for each day's lesson. The activity is a short activity to engage the students in Spanish content and prepare them for the day's lesson.

Do-Now tasks may also be posted on the Smart Board. Be sure to write "On Smart Board" or "On projector" on your permanently posted BBC. Ms. Weininger's Do-Now does this. If you take a look at her Do-Now below, it reviews a variety of skills in various formats to prepare the students for the day's lesson and also review content that has been taught previously. 

To improve your Do-Now, incorporate some of the following strategies:

• Use the Do-Now as a re-teach tool: Write questions that students struggled to master on the last quarterly assessment.
• Use mixed-format questions for a skill: multiple-choice, short answer, open-ended, and so on.
• Organize questions sequentially according to difficulty.
• Spiral objectives, skills, and questions from everything previously learned to keep student learning sharp.
• Develop Do-Now tracking sheet for teachers and students that shows student performance on the skills in each Do-Now.
• Make Do-Nows that look like test questions and make sure they are reviewed in class.
• Observe students' answers during Do-Now and note kids with wrong answers to follow-up with them during oral review.
• Add multiple-choice questions to Do-Now to allow real-time assessment.
• Add why and how questions (for example, Why did you choose this answer? How do you know your answer is correct?) for different levels of learners and to push thinking. 
• Revisit yesterday's objectives in the Do-Now.
• Collect and grade four straight Do-Nows, and for the fifth day let students correct their first four Do-Nows for extra points towards their Do-Now grades. 

See additional videos/examples for Do-Now activities that you may think about using in your classroom:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/class-starting-teaching-strategy 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/engaged-teaching-do-now-activities-sel-lessons-maurice-elias 

http://specialed.about.com/b/2010/12/13/teach-like-a-champion-technique-29.htm