Give five seconds of quiet think-time before any hands go up. Take two or three answers, don't settle which is right yet.

The point of the hook is that pupils cannot answer without knowing whether it is a leap year. Hold the disagreement open — the leap-year wrinkle is the whole reason this lesson exists, and it lands harder if the class argues it out first.

• Worked example (15 March across the month-end) — line marks 15 March at 15, end of March at 31, then 1 April at 32 and 2 April at 33. Method: hop day by day from 15 past 31 into April; stop at 33. Duration = 18 days (target date 2 April). Cue: what day comes after 31 March? Slip to watch: pupils saying day 32 of March, or subtracting 33−15 without naming the April date.
• 91 days — hop in sevens; land on 13. Ask which is quicker, counting weeks or counting days.
• Leap-year February — the hook answer. Let the class answer before you confirm. Counting on from 28 Feb: 29 Feb, 1 Mar, 2 Mar, 3 Mar, that is 4 days. Ordinary year has no 29 Feb, so the same count is 3 days. Every day between is marked, so there is no gap.

Talk this one through together — pupils take turns at the board and the class agrees or corrects out loud.

The single explore line runs 0–60 from 1 May at day 0, and the end of May is a labelled marker at day 30 with 1 June marked right after. Every task reads from the same start, so the month-end pupils cross is visible on screen, they do not have to hold it in their heads. Ask a pupil to point to the end-of-May marker before the 40-day hop crosses it, and land the answer on 10 June.

Spoken extension (no on-screen line needed): if the class is flying, pose 15 December, count on 3 weeks aloud and ask what happens to the year, not just the month — hold out for a pupil to notice the count slips into January of the next year.

This is the practice round — pupils take turns at the board, check each answer, and the class confirms before moving on. Keep the board work brisk rather than over-explaining.

Spoken teacher-led stretch (outside the scored set): once the four problems are done, ask the class aloud how many days they have been alive so far this year — count the whole months already passed using their copybook day-counts, then add the days into the current month. There is more than one sensible answer depending on today's date, so treat it as a reasoning task and accept any correct count for the class's actual date. Watch for pupils forgetting February's length when the count runs through it.