The Do Now Doesn't Need to be Scary

Welcome to the All Star Planning Podcast. My name is Kelsey, and this is the place where I talk all things, teacher, lesson plans today, we’re talking about Do Nows. I hate Do Nows. Anybody else hate Do Nows? Reach out to me. Please tell me if you hate do now because I, I cannot be the only one, right? I’ve always hated Do Nows. I hated them as a kid, I hate them as an adult, I hate them as a teacher – I just all around hate them. I know why they’re important.

Um, some people call them bell ringers. It’s just kind of like the work that your kids do as you’re getting settled. As you are taking attendance, they’re getting ready. They’re getting prepared. They’re getting in the mindset for learning. Um, I hate them. I hated them as a kid. And I really think the reason I hated them when I was in school is because they were never graded.

Grading Do Nows

For me, a kid who is working hard to get an A, um, I was a smart kid, but there were definitely a lot of kids that were smarter than me in school. I felt like if it wasn’t graded, I wasn’t going to spend my time doing it. Anytime a teacher would walk around the room to see who was doing the Do Now, I would just pretend to write stuff. I would never actually do it. And it was because it wasn’t graded. What’s the point of doing schoolwork that’s not graded, right? Especially in my English class because my English classes, to me just seemed like a bunch of baloney. Hence the reason I’m a science teacher, right? Um, no shade to the English teachers. I know now as an adult, that it is a very important skill to know, but at the time it would just, I wasn’t rocking with it.

Why Do Nows are Difficult for me

So your do now is going to be your introduction to your lesson in some way, shape or form.

For me it was just another thing to plan and I hated it. It was like, “what’s a question that’s going to get them warmed up that maybe they can’t answer yet, but there’ll be able to answer by the end of the lesson.” And it just became like, it was just too much. So, what I decided to do this year, I think it was life changing. And now I’m a big fan of the Do Now, is this crazy?

For years I hated them years and years and years, and years and years, even at the beginning of this school year, I hated them. My, uh, principal gave me an observation and I was talking about how much I hated Do Nows. And he was like, well, you know, they’re really important, and I was like, yeah, but I hate him. And he was like, they’re really important. I did Do Nows. I’ve always done Do Nows, but I hate them. I felt like they took just as much time to plan as like my full activity and my lesson, which is not supposed to happen.

How I went from Hating Do Nows to Loving them

So what I decided to do this year was actually. Just to create a giant bank of questions, hat were review questions. that my kids would be able to do at virtually any time of the school year. So I have like a September bank, which is general science questions, scientific method, questions, measurement questions, and the stuff that we learned in September. And then when we get to October, my October question bank includes September concepts, plus new things or learning in October.

By the time I got to February, the kids were doing so much review work in our first five minutes of class. And I would try to pick questions that kind of paired with the concepts that we were learning that day. But I wasn’t too crazy about it because my kids are preparing for a final exam. And for me, that’s a state final exam, and exposing them to the types of questions that they were going to see, the wording of questions, and then just concepts that come up quite a bit, or things they may have forgotten about, to me became genius. And in particular, just the number of questions that were modeled after the final exam was going to set my kids up for success, but final exams were canceled.

Next year, I will be continuing my question bank Do Nows simply because they were super easy, they didn’t require a lot of thought. My brain was able to not think about the Do Nows and instead plan stuff that I thought was better; more interactive; more interesting for my kids. And here’s the best part: I actually had the kids self assess them.

Self Assessing Criteria

An upcoming podcast episode is going to be all about creating a culture in your classroom, where students are comfortable with self assessment. Because I think that I’m actually like really good at doing that. Um, basically you just tell the kids, you love them every day. So I actually have my kids self assess their Do Nows, and this is kind of crazy. I found this acrylic organizer on Amazon. And it has three compartments in it. So I have the kids, we keep our self assessment very simple. We do a three, two, one scale. Um, three is an expert. Two: you’re feeling okay. And one: I call them lost puppies. Because they’re a little lost. They’re sad. They need some help, but they’re cute adorable puppies.

And the little cards that I put in the organizer are three pictures of puppies that I found. So the kids will take their Do Nows and I run through it and I give them the answers. And we talk about the answers, and then they self-assess. And for a while I was doing it based on how they felt. So maybe they got all five questions right. But they felt really confused about it. So they would put themselves in the one or the two box.

How my Students Self Assess Do Nows

And then at some point I would change it based on their score. So I would say, okay, if you got five out of five, then you are a level three. You’re an expert. If you got three or four questions, right, then you are a level two, you feel okay. And if you got zero, one or two questions, and then you are a lost puppy. So I would change it from time to time because sometimes kids get the right answer, but they’re not sure why. And sometimes, um, I, I’m more interested in the score. Sometimes I’m more interested in how they feel and we would just change it from time to time.

But really what happens is I would just give the kids five review questions: all multiple choice. We’d breeze through them, check things out. I know that there’s always going to be some kids that, um, aren’t putting in their best effort for one reason or another. Maybe it’s too early, maybe they were late to class, maybe they’re not feeling well. Maybe they just don’t know the answers so they’re afraid to answer the questions. And that’s part of the reason why I would change back and forth between how you felt and what you actually scored. So, um, that’s something to consider as well.

Sorting vs. Grading

If you can’t get a one basket organizer, I would consider, um, putting self assessment type things into baskets or folders or different turn in bins or whatever it may be. Like those turn in trays, like an office desk tray, where you can fit papers. Um, I use Sterilite drawers. I like the Sterilite drawers and you can like pull them out and treat them as baskets. And then shove them back in the drawer system. And then it’s all organized and put away and not papers thrown all over the place.

So there’s lots of different options for having your kids self-assess and I think that’s one of the best ways to do it. It’s just like physically put it in a spot as opposed to having a kid grade it themselves. I think it’s a lot more pressure for the kids to grade it themselves than it is to just drop it in a box.

Want to Learn More about my Planning Techniques?

So that’s my 2 cents on it. Um, if you haven’t already sign up for the masterclass. It is how I take the five pieces of the all-star planning method, put them together and kind of show you how it’s done. You can find that at plan.kelseyreavy.com. Did I mention it’s a free masterclass? It’s a free masterclass. Um, make sure you subscribe to the podcast because you don’t want to miss anything.

I talk cool stuff here. Next week I’m talking exit tickets. I hate that term: Exit tickets. We’ll talk next week. Okay. I can’t let this go on too long. But subscribe to the podcast. New episodes come out every Tuesday.

That’s all. It’s all I have for you.

Don’t be a Do Now Hater.