Teaching and Learning

A Calm Start: Introducing the 'Do Now'

This year, our college has embraced an exciting new evidence-based teaching strategy that is already making a real difference to learning: the Do Now.

What exactly is a Do Now? It's a short, focused learning task - generally just three to five minutes - that students begin the moment they walk through the classroom door. No waiting for the roll, no settling-in drift. Students sit down, work in silence, and get straight to the learning. The result is a calm, purposeful atmosphere from the very first second of every lesson.

But the Do Now is about much more than a smooth start. These tasks are carefully designed to ask students to reach back into their memory - recalling something learned in a previous lesson or an earlier unit. This is not accidental. Research into how we learn tells us clearly that the act of retrieving knowledge from memory without notes - rather than simply re-reading it - is one of the most powerful things a student can do to make learning stick. Every Do Now is, in effect, a small workout for the brain.

While students are thinking, remembering and writing, staff are active. Teachers circulate, observe, and use the Do Now as a window into real-time understanding - spotting misconceptions early and celebrating success quietly. 

I want to take this opportunity to extend a sincere thank you to our teaching staff. Classrooms are complex spaces, and teachers' minds are already busy with a thousand and one things to remember and manage within a lesson. For this reason, learning and consistently enacting a new classroom strategy actually takes dedication; our teachers have risen to that challenge with energy and professionalism.

And to our students - a huge well done. So many of you have taken to this new routine brilliantly, walking in ready to focus and showing real maturity. 

The Do Now. One minute in, the learning has already begun.