"Warm-Ups:
Starting the Instructional Time on the Right Foot"
When you are teaching, your goal should be to have students engaged from the moment they walk in your classroom to the moment they leave. While this is never fully possible with every student, it is a worthy goal that will lead to positive choices for you and your students. One way to begin each day on the right foot is to have a warm-up waiting for students as they walk through the door. These can be used in all grades and are useful for preparing students for the day's lessons.
Warm-ups are very short assignments that students complete within the first few minutes of class while you are taking care of important housekeeping tasks like taking attendance. Warm-ups help prepare students for lessons, making it clear that you mean for them to work when they are in your class.
Warm-ups are also an effective way to reduce discipline problems at the beginning of class. Students are involved in something academic from the start. They do not have free time to get into trouble.
Methods of Use: If used well, warm-ups can give focus to the day's lessons or provide key reviews of the previously learned material. Students are often asked simple questions based on information learned. They can also be required to give short, thoughtful responses that require them to integrate their learning into the real world.
It is imperative that if you choose to use warm-ups, you do so consistently. Most teachers find that having the warm-up on the board or on an overhead sheet is the best method of presentation, though you might find that some questions work better when printed on a piece of paper.
Grading Warm-Ups: Teachers often wonder how to grade these warm-ups. You can choose to collect and grade the warm-ups each day or have the students use a warmup notebook that they date. You collect these at intervals of your choosing to grade them. The advantage to this is that there are fewer papers to grade each day, leaving time for other important tasks.
Some teachers grade students for completion, while others grade for accuracy. These should not be assignments that significantly lower a student's grade if completed poorly, but they should have some consequences so that students stay on task.
If you have used warm-ups correctly, they should relate to and reinforce the work that is going on in class. If you choose to require students to complete all warm-ups in their notebooks, then you should keep your own notebook with all warm-up questions listed. This will help you remember on which days you assigned which questions.
Warm-ups are very short assignments that students complete within the first few minutes of class while you are taking care of important housekeeping tasks like taking attendance. Warm-ups help prepare students for lessons, making it clear that you mean for them to work when they are in your class.
Warm-ups are also an effective way to reduce discipline problems at the beginning of class. Students are involved in something academic from the start. They do not have free time to get into trouble.
Methods of Use: If used well, warm-ups can give focus to the day's lessons or provide key reviews of the previously learned material. Students are often asked simple questions based on information learned. They can also be required to give short, thoughtful responses that require them to integrate their learning into the real world.
It is imperative that if you choose to use warm-ups, you do so consistently. Most teachers find that having the warm-up on the board or on an overhead sheet is the best method of presentation, though you might find that some questions work better when printed on a piece of paper.
Grading Warm-Ups: Teachers often wonder how to grade these warm-ups. You can choose to collect and grade the warm-ups each day or have the students use a warmup notebook that they date. You collect these at intervals of your choosing to grade them. The advantage to this is that there are fewer papers to grade each day, leaving time for other important tasks.
Some teachers grade students for completion, while others grade for accuracy. These should not be assignments that significantly lower a student's grade if completed poorly, but they should have some consequences so that students stay on task.
If you have used warm-ups correctly, they should relate to and reinforce the work that is going on in class. If you choose to require students to complete all warm-ups in their notebooks, then you should keep your own notebook with all warm-up questions listed. This will help you remember on which days you assigned which questions.
10 Innovative Warm-Up Ideas
Click the button on the right to download 10 Innovative Warm-Up Ideas for you to utilize in "starting on the right foot" with each class period in order to maximize the learning for students.
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