Starter Activities & Plenaries That Work

The research is clear. Retrieval practice — asking students to recall information from previous lessons — is one of the most effective learning strategies we have. Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction put daily review at the top of the list. Cognitive science tells us that every time students retrieve information, the memory gets stronger.

A well-designed starter doesn't just settle the class. It strengthens learning.

Similarly, a good plenary isn't just about wrapping up. It's your formative assessment moment — the point where you find out what students actually understood, what needs revisiting, and who needs intervention. Without it, you're guessing.

The problem isn't that teachers don't know this. The problem is that designing varied, engaging starters and plenaries for 25 lessons a week is yet another thing on an already impossible to-do list. AI solves the design problem so you can focus on the teaching.

Here's your menu. Each of these can be generated with a single prompt:

1. Retrieval quiz — "Create a 5-question retrieval quiz on [previous topic] for [year group]. Mix question types — 2 multiple choice, 2 short answer, 1 explain why."

2. Think-pair-share — "Give me a thought-provoking question about [topic] that Year [X] students could discuss in pairs for 2 minutes before sharing with the class."

3. True or false challenge — "Create 6 true-or-false statements about [topic] for [year group]. Include 2 that are deliberately tricky — statements that seem true but aren't."

4. Odd one out — "Give me 3 'odd one out' puzzles related to [topic]. Each has 4 items where students must identify which doesn't belong and explain why."

5. What's wrong with this? — "Write a short paragraph about [topic] that contains 4 deliberate mistakes. Students must find and correct them."

6. Image prompt — "Describe an image I could show to start a lesson on [topic]. What questions would you ask students about it?"

7. Keyword definitions — "Give me 6 key terms from [topic] with student-friendly definitions. Students match term to definition."

8. Ranking challenge — "Create a ranking activity where students put [items related to topic] in order from [criterion] and justify their choices."

9. Connection puzzle — "Give me 12 words related to [topic]. Students group them into 3 categories and explain the connection."

10. Yesterday's exit ticket — "Based on a lesson about [yesterday's topic], create 3 quick questions that check whether students remember the key points."

A plenary should answer one question: did they learn what I taught? Here are the most effective types:

Exit tickets — "Write one thing you learned today and one thing you're still unsure about." Simple, fast, and gives you diagnostic information for tomorrow's lesson.

3-2-1 — "Write 3 things you learned, 2 things you found interesting, 1 question you still have." Slightly more structured than a basic exit ticket.

Explain it to a younger student — "Explain [today's concept] in a way a Year 3 student would understand." Forces simplification, which reveals depth of understanding.

The wrong answer — "Here's a common wrong answer to today's key question: [wrong answer]. Explain why it's wrong." Requires higher-order thinking and addresses misconceptions directly.

Traffic light self-assessment — Students rate their confidence: green (got it), amber (mostly understand, a few gaps), red (need more help). Quick, visual, and informs your planning.

You can generate a week's worth of plenaries for any topic with one prompt: "Create 5 different plenary activities for a week of Year [X] [subject] lessons on [topic]. Each should take 5 minutes and assess student understanding in a different way."

Here's the system that keeps this sustainable long-term. Instead of generating starters and plenaries lesson by lesson, build a bank you can pull from:

At the start of each half-term, generate a bank of starters and plenaries for your upcoming topics:

"I'm teaching [subject] to [year group] this half-term. The topics are: [list topics in order]. Create a bank of 3 starter activities and 2 plenary activities for each topic. Vary the activity types across the bank. Label each with the topic and type."

For a 6-week half-term covering 4 topics, that's 12 starters and 8 plenaries — all generated in one prompt. Save them in a document, and each morning you just pick the one that fits today's lesson.

Over time, your bank grows. By the end of a year, you have starters and plenaries for every topic you teach, ready to reuse and refresh. The initial investment is 10 minutes per half-term. The payoff is never scrambling for a starter activity at 7:45am again.

A few practical tips from teachers who've been doing this:

Print a week at a time. On Monday morning, have five starters printed or saved on your slides. No daily scramble.

Use the plenary data. If exit tickets show half the class didn't understand today's objective, tomorrow's starter should revisit it. The starter-plenary loop is your most powerful formative assessment cycle.

Rotate the types. Students engage better with variety. Don't do retrieval quizzes every day. Alternate between quiz, discussion, error-spotting, and ranking activities to keep the novelty.

Let students see the pattern. When students know that every lesson starts with a thinking task and ends with an assessment activity, they settle faster and stay engaged longer. Routine isn't boring — it's secure.

Keep what works, replace what doesn't. Your AI-generated bank is a starting point. After you use each activity, mentally note which ones landed well. Keep those. Replace the ones that didn't. Within a term, you'll have a curated collection that you know works with your students.