The first five minutes decide the other fifty

The opening five minutes of a session are the ones students are most able to concentrate in, and they are almost universally spent on the least valuable activity available: waiting for latecomers, taking the register, and asking the room where you stopped last time.

Put retrieval there

The strongest evidence in learning science says the same thing repeatedly: pulling information out of memory strengthens it far more than putting it in again. So the opening should be three or four short questions on previous material, answered in writing, before you have said anything.

Mix the ages of the material deliberately: one question from last session, one from last month, one from the term before. The old ones are the point. Anything recalled only when it was just taught has not been learned, it has been briefly held.

What it fixes at the same time

• Lateness. Arriving to a room already working is a different social experience from arriving to a room waiting. Nothing needs to be said about it.
• Register-taking. Take it while they write. It stops costing teaching time entirely.
• "Where did we stop?" You stop asking, because you can see it.

Keep it small enough to survive

Three questions, five minutes, no marking. Read the answers by walking the room, not by collecting paper. The moment this generates a pile to take home, you will drop it inside a month. Its value is in happening every single session, and a smaller routine that survives beats a better one that does not.

One thing not to do

Do not turn it into a graded quiz. As soon as it counts, students protect their marks: they revise the night before, they copy, and you stop seeing what is actually retained. The whole diagnostic value comes from it being consequence-free.

Sources

• What Works Clearinghouse — Educator Practice Guides (US Dept. of Education)
• OECD — Education and Skills