Write Monday's retrieval starter in ninety seconds

Write Monday's retrieval starter in ninety seconds

You already know the research. Retrieval practice works. Spaced retrieval works harder. But nobody actually builds a proper spaced Do Now every Monday, because when you have twenty-two lessons across the week and Sunday night is closing in, the ten-minute starter is the first thing that gets a hurried "let's just chat about the weekend" rewrite.

The prompt

You are helping me write a ten-minute retrieval starter (a "Do Now") for a [YEAR LEVEL] [SUBJECT] class in an Australian secondary school.

Context you need:
- Content taught last week, 60% of the starter: [PASTE 3 to 5 BULLET POINTS OR THE LESSON OBJECTIVES]
- Content taught 2 to 3 weeks ago, 30% of the starter: [PASTE 2 or 3 BULLET POINTS OR OBJECTIVES]
- Content from last term or earlier this term that they should still know, 10%: [PASTE 1 or 2 BULLET POINTS]
- Class context: [E.G. MIXED-ABILITY, EAL/D LEARNERS PRESENT, TENDS TO STRUGGLE WITH X]

Now write the starter:
1. Eight questions total, weighted 5 / 2 / 1 across the three time horizons above.
2. Vary the format across the eight: at least two low-stakes recall, at least two application, and at least one that requires the student to explain their reasoning in a sentence.
3. Number them, and order them so a student can work through easiest to hardest.
4. After the eight questions, provide a clean answer key.
5. Flag the one question most likely to reveal a persistent misconception, and say what the misconception is likely to be, so I know what to listen for as I circulate.
6. Australian English. No emoji. Ready to paste onto a slide.

What it does well

Enforces the spacing. Most teacher-built starters unconsciously overweight what you taught yesterday, because that is what is freshest in your own head. The 5 / 2 / 1 split forces the model to reach further back than you would, which is the whole point.

Where it falls over

The model does not know what your students actually know. If you feed it thin context (three vague bullets), you get generic questions that could suit any Year 9 class in the country. The more specific the objectives you paste, the sharper the starter.

Try it like this

For Year 8 maths: paste the algebra objectives from last week, the fractions work from three weeks ago, and one geometry idea from Term 1. You will usually surface a fraction misconception you had forgotten to check for.

For VCE English: paste last week's essay focus (say, a paragraph structure element), the text quotations they were expected to memorise a fortnight ago, and one metalanguage term from Unit 1 they still misuse.

If you only have five minutes to prep: skip the class context line and just paste the three time-horizon bullet points. The starter will still be better than what you would write cold at 7:45 on Monday.

Save the answer key as a separate file. You will want it on Tuesday too, when the kid who was away on Monday asks what they missed.