Script your first ten minutes back

Script your first ten minutes back

Term 3 starts Monday. The class will file in whether you have thought about the first ten minutes or not. If you have not, the class will decide what those ten minutes are, and it will be a low-grade re-run of the last week of Term 2. If you have, the class will settle into the routines you name, in the order you name them, in the tone you set. This is not a lesson, and it should not try to be. It is a routines reset. Ten minutes of it changes the shape of the term.

The prompt

You are a senior [SUBJECT] teacher in an Australian [PRIMARY / SECONDARY / TERTIARY] school. You have taught the first lesson of a new term enough times to know the difference between a class that resets and a class that limps back into the term half-holidays and half-school. You know the first ten minutes carry more weight than any other ten minutes of the term. You do not lecture the class on behaviour. You name routines, you show them once, and you move.

Today you are helping me script the first ten minutes of my first lesson of Term 3. Not the whole lesson. The opening ten minutes: the routines reset, the shape of the term, and the first content moment. What happens next is a normal lesson, which I will plan separately.

THE CONTEXT
- Year level: [YEAR LEVEL, e.g. Year 8]
- Subject and unit starting Monday: [e.g. Year 8 English, novel study on Boy Overboard]
- New class or continuing class: [ONE LINE, e.g. "continuing class I had all Term 2" or "new Year 9 group I have never taught before"]
- The one routine that softened by the end of Term 2 that I need reset (or the new routine I want to establish this term): [ONE SENTENCE, e.g. "the entry routine collapsed, students walked in mid-conversation and took five minutes to settle" or "I want to introduce a Do Now retrieval starter every lesson from Monday"]
- The one thing about this class the script needs to hold: [ONE LINE, e.g. "two students I had a rough Term 2 with, one identified as EAL/D at intermediate level, three quiet students who need explicit routines named in plain English"]
- School language for behaviour and expectations: [e.g. "PBL matrix: Ready, Respectful, Safe" or "restorative practices, no formal matrix" or "Berry Street trauma-informed language" or "we do not use a matrix, plain expectations"]
- Whether Term 3 begins a new unit or continues one: [ONE LINE, e.g. "new unit, novel study" or "second half of the same Term 2 unit"]
- The first content moment I want inside the ten minutes: [ONE LINE, e.g. "a retrieval question about last term's persuasive writing unit" or "a hook question that opens the novel study"]

PRODUCE FIVE SECTIONS, IN THIS EXACT ORDER. NO PADDING. NO FLATTERING PRE-AMBLE ("great class", "strong opening"). START WITH SECTION 1.

SECTION 1. THE OPENING (0:00 to 2:00)
The two minutes from the bell to the class settled. What the teacher is doing physically, what the teacher says (in quotation marks, ready to say verbatim), and the specific move that gets the class from "arriving" to "sat down and quiet". Include:
- Where the teacher is standing as students walk in (at the door, at the whiteboard, at the desk)
- The one greeting that names the term reset without over-explaining. "Welcome back, let's get to it" is better than a two-minute speech about the holidays.
- The specific move that closes the settle: what is on the board that they read on arrival, how the teacher signals go-time, how long the teacher waits in silence before starting.

Do NOT write a monologue. Two minutes is short. Three sentences from the teacher, max. If a line does not earn its place inside the two minutes, cut it.

SECTION 2. THE ROUTINES RESET (2:00 to 5:00)
Three minutes where the teacher names the routines they want back (or newly). Structure this as name, show, practise, not lecture:
- NAME the routine in one sentence, in the school's language. "This term, when you walk in, you sit down and open your book to today's Do Now."
- SHOW the routine, once. "Let me show you what that looks like." Walk through it in 20 seconds.
- PRACTISE the routine once, now, together. "Let's do it. Books open. Do Now on the board. Go."

Cover at most TWO routines. Not four, not six. If the context named one routine, pick a SECOND one that naturally pairs with it. Do NOT re-list every rule the class already knows. Do NOT read the PBL matrix aloud. Name what changes on Monday.

Write the teacher's lines in quotation marks. Include specific timings (how long to hold silence, how many students to check on, when to move on). Do not write "the teacher could say" or "consider saying". Write the line.

SECTION 3. THE SHAPE OF TERM 3 (5:00 to 7:00)
Two minutes on what this class is doing this term, in one sentence. Not a five-week overview. Not a mention of every assessment. One sentence that lands the direction of the term, one sentence that lands the first summative task and roughly when it lands, and one sentence that lands the ONE thing the teacher wants the class to be able to do by the end of the term. Then the transition: the verbatim line that moves the class from "we have talked about the term" to "we are doing the work now".

Do NOT explain the whole rubric, do NOT walk through every unit, do NOT hand out task sheets. Sheets on Friday. Wednesday earliest. Not Monday minute five.

SECTION 4. THE FIRST CONTENT MOMENT (7:00 to 10:00)
Three minutes of actual content, chosen so the class ends the opening feeling like a lesson has started, not like ten minutes of housekeeping. Write the retrieval starter or hook question in full, ready to put on the board. Write the teacher's line that introduces it. Write the teacher's line at the end of the three minutes that transitions into the rest of the lesson (the lesson objective, the first activity, whatever the middle-of-lesson move looks like for this class).

The content moment must be TIGHT. If the retrieval starter is more than four questions, it is not tight. If the hook takes more than 90 seconds to introduce, it is not tight. Cut until it is tight.

SECTION 5. THE HONEST NOTES
Two to four short bullets I need to see before I run this script on Monday.
- The three things to NOT do in the first ten minutes for this year level and subject. (e.g. "do not spend the whole ten minutes on housekeeping and then wonder why the class is talkative from minute eleven"; "do not tell them off for what happened in Term 2; the class either does not remember or does not care").
- Year-level adjustments if the script feels too long or short. (e.g. "Year 4 need the routines shown twice, so Section 2 stretches by a minute and Section 3 shortens"; "Year 12 can carry a longer sentence in Section 3 about the exam runway").
- The move if the class walks in genuinely difficult (three students already off-task at the door, not a normal Term 3 start). Name the ONE move that is worth pulling out; do not list six.
- Anything I need to have physically ready before the bell that the script assumes (Do Now on the board before 9am, a prop at the front desk, the first slide up, the door open or closed).

RULES
- Australian English throughout. Year 8, not 8th grade. Term 3, not Q3. Australian assessment vocabulary.
- No em-dashes and no en-dashes anywhere. Commas and full stops only.
- Teacher lines in quotation marks, ready to say. No stage directions inside the quote.
- Time-stamped structure (0:00 to 2:00, etc). No wall-of-text sections. If a section runs long, cut, do not shrink the timings.
- Do not use the words "leverage", "unpack", "deep dive", "robust", "scaffold their thinking", "meet students where they are", "buy-in", or the phrase "at its core".
- Do not open the script with "In today's lesson we will be learning about..." or any variant. That is the middle of the lesson, not the start.
- Do not finish with "let me know if you want the rest of the lesson". I will ask if I want that.

What it does well

Forces the model into the discipline that the first ten minutes needs and that most teachers, at 8:30pm on Sunday, skip: a time-stamped script, teacher lines in quotation marks, and a specific name-show-practise structure for the routines rather than a lecture. Section 1's two-minute constraint is what stops the script becoming a speech: two minutes with three sentences is a real design brief, not "start with a warm welcome". Section 2's cap at two routines is the second important choice; a first lesson back that tries to re-establish six routines re-establishes none. Section 3's one-sentence-per-point rule is what stops the Term 3 overview turning into fifteen minutes of housekeeping. And Section 4 is the piece that keeps the class in the "lesson has started" tone from minute eleven onwards, rather than dropping into it later when the tone has already slipped.

Where it falls over

The model will overwrite. Ten minutes is a real constraint, and if you paste the output and read it aloud to yourself, you may find it runs to fifteen. Read the whole script through with a stopwatch on Sunday and cut where it drifts. Second failure: the model can produce a routines reset in Section 2 that sounds like a teacher describing pedagogy rather than a teacher speaking to a class. If the teacher lines read like a webinar handout, ask the model for "the same lines rewritten as a teacher talking to their class, not a teacher writing about their class". Third failure: for genuinely difficult classes, Section 5's one move is a starting point, not a plan. The prompt cannot know your two Term 2 students; the script assumes a normal reset. If the class is not normal, do not run the reset lesson from the couch on Sunday, ring your year-level coordinator on Sunday. And the prompt cannot judge whether Monday is even the right day to run a routines reset in the first place. If Monday is a whole-school assembly followed by a truncated period, the reset lesson is Tuesday, and the model does not know that.

Try it like this

For a Year 8 continuing English class where the entry routine collapsed in Term 2: paste the context, name the routine you want back, and let the model produce all five sections. Print the script on one A4 page. Read it three times before Monday. Do not read it from the page on Monday. You are memorising the moves, not the words.

For a new Year 10 History class you have never taught: the script leans on Section 1 harder, because you have not built a relationship and the settle depends on the first thing you say. Ask the model to write the greeting for a class you have not met, not a class you know.

For a Year 4 primary class continuing with you: the script becomes eight minutes not ten, and Section 2 stretches because primary students need routines shown twice. Section 5's year-level adjustment note is the piece you use to rebalance the timings.

For a Year 12 VCE class returning for Term 3 in an exam-heavy semester: Section 3 does more work. The "shape of the term" sentence needs to name the countdown to the exam without leaning into pressure. Ask the model to draft that sentence in three variations and pick the one that suits your class's temperament.

For a difficult class where two students had a rough Term 2: Section 5's one move matters most. Do not use the script to re-open the Term 2 conversation in front of the room. Use the script to reset the tone in front of the whole class, then have the one-on-one in the corridor at the end of the lesson.

If you only have ten minutes on Sunday evening: run Sections 1 and 4 only. The opening two minutes and the first content moment. The routines reset and the term overview can go in Wednesday, once you have seen the class once. The first and last three minutes of the opening are what set the tone; the middle you can fill in when you know what the class needed.

The teacher who scripts the first ten minutes is the teacher whose Term 3 starts on the bell. The one who wings it is the one wondering by Wednesday why the class is louder than Term 2 ended.