This activity can be used as behaviour for learning (BfL) activity to relax students at the start of the lesson and get them into learning mode, a literacy exercise where students have to highlight nouns, pronouns, verbs, transitive verbs, adjectives etc. The activity also enhances listening skills and is particularly effective for EAL students. Finally is can be used as the introduction and foundations of a lesson, where the basic lesson content is delivered through a song. 

Cut out each line of the lyrics, the students then have to place them in the correct sequence on hearing the song. This requires complete focus and silence and is most effective as a paired activity. The activity can be applied to any song, but I recommend that is has a low tempo as it has a calming affect on the students and they will need to find each line of the song before the next one is sung.  

They Might Be Giants the, '90's band of Birdhouse in Your Soul fame have produced many songs which are education related, their album and DVD Here Comes Science is an excellent resources and contains 19 tracks on various science topics which make really useful starters. 

I've included some of the tracks I've used many times which has had positive outcomes below. Songs that the students are not fully familiar with work best as they are then forced to listen intently to the track as opposed to just using their memory to complete the sequence. 

Using the template below questions are printed out onto Post-it Notes. The colour of the Post-it Note corresponds to the level of difficulty of the question.

The Post-it Notes are then placed onto the desk of each student before they enter the room; the students then have to answer their question as their starter activity. Post-it Note starters enables the teacher to differentiate the question each student receives to challenge them, but at the same time make it achievable. I use the five different colours of Post-it Notes for five levels of difficulty. 

Balloons are hidden under tables and chairs before the students enter the lesson. On the teachers command the students have to find the balloon with their name written on it. Inside each balloon is a piece of paper with a question written on it, the students have to pop the balloon to obtain the question and then answer it. 

The questions can be based upon the previous lessons objectives and differentiated for each student. 

An alternative is to place a letter in each balloon, the students have to gather into groups of the same colour balloons and work as a team to arrange the letters to spell a key word associated with the topic and then compose a precise definition for that word.