9 Warm Up Activities to Hook Students From the Start (EP19)

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Elementary Math Chat, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Since it is the week of Thanksgiving, I want to take the time to thank each and every one of you for your support and for listening to the podcast. You are the reason I started this journey, so it means more than you will ever know that you choose to join me each week.

So, to everyone listening, thank you, Happy Thanksgiving, and make sure to eat lots of turkey this week.

Alright teachers, if you have been with me from the beginning, you might remember back in Episode Two that I mentioned a free resource I have with over 60 math lesson plan ideas, and you might have even downloaded that document. Hopefully, you did. But within that document, there is an entire page on lesson hooks and warm-up activities. 

In today’s episode, I am going to highlight nine of those ideas and share ways to implement these warmups into your lessons to really capture the attention of your students, and make sure to listen to the very end because I give you a fun way to wrap up your lesson, and that’s going to be in the teaching tip of the week.

Let’s get started with my first suggestion for a warm-up activity, and they are called Esti-Mysteries. Esti-Mysteries are created by Steve Wyborney, and they are free to download on his website. I think right now he has a total of 170 Esti-Mysteries.

The overall idea is for students to estimate and try to guess the number of items in a jar, and these items vary from pumpkins to marbles to candy. So, it’s different each time, and it gives them multiple opportunities to estimate. They start off with just a really cold guess, no clues, just a good old educated guess. It will then start to give them clues as to how many are in the jar.

For example, it will say the answer is a multiple of three, or the answer is greater than 15, but less than 60. So, each time they get a new clue, they look back at their original guess, their original estimate, and they’ll see if they’re on track. If not, they’ll use those clues to adjust their estimate, and then hopefully by the end, they’ll have the correct answer.

Sometimes for fun, I would do these right before lunch or right before specials, and then I would make them wait until they got back for the reveal. They thought that was so mean, I know it kind of it! But it did make it even more exciting when they got back and they learned what the number was. 

Now, these Esti-Mysteries are pretty quick, so you can do two or three for your lesson warmup. Your kids are always going to want more, so have maybe two or three ready for your lesson warmup.

Let’s move on to my second suggestion for a lesson warmup. These are also from Steve Wyborney, and they are called estimation clipboards. What’s cool about these is they have several different estimations within one activity, and you use what you learn about one amount to estimate a new amount. So, it’s a great way to practice with benchmarks.

Sometimes the actual container will change. Like in one example it’s a small glass, and then in the next example it’s a larger vase, so they really have to think about what they know about what amount to estimate for the next amount. Huge shout out to Steve Wyborney for making these free estimation clipboards and Est-Mysteries. They are so much fun, they are so easy to use, and they are a great review of math skills.

My third suggestion for a warm-up activity is a quick vocabulary activity that you can use with units that either have a lot of vocabulary, like geometry, or you can use them in any unit and just use review vocabulary terms, and they are anagrams. 

Anagrams are just a fancy way of saying a word scramble, so students have to unscramble the letters to spell the vocabulary term. You can give them one word to unscramble, or you can put a whole list of words up on the board to unscramble.

Once the time is up, you can reveal the vocab term and then also review the definitions. I would recommend if they finish early to have them define the term, or draw a picture, or provide an example just to reinforce the vocab term even more and give them something to do while they wait.

If you do one word at a time, you can even give them clues, like every 15-30 seconds, you can give them a new clue. Just for fun, let’s try one and see if you can unscramble it. The letters are CTFAIRN. 

Now, you’re probably stuck with that, so here’s your first clue.

Part. 

Okay, here’s your second clue.

Thirds.

I’m sure you’ve guessed it now, the word is fraction. So, that’s how it works with the clues. I do have a link in the show notes to a website that has math anagrams on it, and I think this would be a really fun choice board activity. I think there are 12 vocabulary words on a page, and students have to unscramble them and type them in, and it’ll check their answers for them.

Moving on to my fourth suggestion for a warm-up activity, this one I have mentioned before, most recently back in episode 14 on task cards, and that is Quiz-Quiz-Trade. This is a great way to begin your lesson because it gets your students up, it gets them moving and interacting with each other. 

I’m not going to go into too much detail just because I went into pretty full detail in Episode 14. But, with Quiz-Quiz-Trade, students will need a task card or a flashcard or anything that has the question on the front and then the answer on the back, and they quiz each other and then they trade, quiz-quiz-trade.

Definitely make sure this is paired with skills where they can answer with mental math. They are going to be walking around. They’re not taking a paper and pencil, so you need to have skills that can be done mentally. And actually back in episode 14, I listed a whole bunch of ideas for Quiz-Quiz-Trade, so definitely check that one out if you missed that episode.

I mostly did Quiz-Quiz-Trade when I needed to check for homework completion. But it was also a great way to end the lesson too, so I’m a big fan of Quiz-Quiz-Trade.

My fifth suggestion for a warm-up activity is called Guess My Number. In episode four, I did share a guess my number game. But today I’m going to share a different version that’s a little quicker than the game version I previously talked about.

In this version, you give them several clues and all of the clues tie in math vocabulary, like odd and even, factors and multiples. You can also use words like sum or difference, product, and quotient. Here’s an example of one that you can do with your students, and this one is on fractions. So, let’s see if you can guess my number. 

Start with the sum of 1/6 and 5/6, add 4, subtract 2/3, add 3, subtract 1/3, and that was your last clue. If you came up with the number 7, you are correct. Once you do a few of these together, you can even have your students create them as well.

Alright, let’s move on to my sixth suggestion, and this one is called Which One Doesn’t Belong. Which One Doesn’t belong is a really simple concept. You are shown four different images, or four numbers, and you have to find a reason or two, why one of them doesn’t belong. 

This is another activity to incorporate that academic vocabulary. For example, they might see that only one of them is odd, or only one of them is prime, or only one of them is a multiple of 10, and I also love that there can be more than one answer for each example. 

This activity is a good one if you are short on time, but you still want something engaging to open up your lesson.

Let’s move on to my seventh suggestion for a warm-up activity, and that is to use Boom Cards. Boom Card decks typically come with 15 to 20 questions, so just pick 3-5 questions depending on how long they take to solve, and make those your warm-up questions. 

Now, these questions can be over just one specific skill, like maybe you want to review factors. Or they can be a spiral review. You can pick card number one, card number 10, and card number 20, and those are likely going to be different skills.

Speaking of spiral review, that is actually my eighth suggestion for a warm-up activity, and I know these are pretty common. I think nearly every class I subbed for last year began their lesson with a paper-pencil spiral review, and I definitely see the value in these. 

I do like that from a teacher’s perspective it’s a quiet and soft start to your lesson. But you have to admit, it’s really not the most exciting way to begin a lesson.

So, if you’re required to give spiral reviews, or you see the value in them but you want a more exciting way to begin your lesson, consider assigning a spiral review as part of their independent assignment during math centers. That’s what I started doing, and I just felt like it was a good way to get the spiral review in, and I could still start my lesson with something a little bit more engaging.

As far as checking over them, I suggest doing this as a group after your lesson but before they work on the next day’s question. So, what I mean by that is, you would go over Monday’s questions right before they work on Tuesday’s questions. Again, this is just an option if you want to do spiral reviews at a different point in your lesson. You don’t always want to do it to start your lesson.

Alright, we have made it to my ninth and final suggestion for a warm-up activity, and this one is to activate their prior knowledge (I just love the way that sounds by the way, activate your prior knowledge) with a discussion using Think-Pair-Share. 

Let’s say you are teaching a lesson on estimation. Ask your students to think of a time when they had to estimate in their real life. Allow them to first think on their own, maybe 20-30 seconds. Then have them pair up with a partner, either their face partner or a should partner, just somebody right next to them so it’s quick, and then you can share as a group. 

They’ll probably say things like they’ve estimated when they were cooking or measuring or even sports, or maybe they estimated what time it was or with money. Now, when you do share as a group, then you can also create a word web with estimation on the inside, and then you write their ideas on the outside. 

Another idea is when you are teaching fractions. Ask them to think about items that can be broken into equal-sized parts. They’re probably going to say pizza right away, and that’s great. That’s a great example. But they also might say maybe even money or time. Something a little bit more abstract.

So again, you can create that word web, put fraction in the middle, and then those words go on the outside.

Think-Pair-Share has been around for a long time, and it’s no wonder that it’s lasted because it’s low prep, it’s meaningful, it’s relevant, and it’s a way to start your lesson.

Well, we are near the end, but before we get to today’s teaching tip of the week, let’s do a quick recap of all nine warm-up activities that you can do to start your lesson.

1. Esti-Mysteries
2. Estimation Clipboards
3. Math Anagrams
4. Quiz-Quiz-Trade
5. Guess My Number
6. Which One Doesn’t Belong
7. Boom Cards
8. Spiral Review
9. Think-Pair-Share

Alright, well it is now time for today’s teaching tip of the week. Today’s episode was about how to begin your lesson, but today’s teaching tip is about how to close your lesson. 

Now I know, the end of the lesson when you’re trying to pack up and switch classes or head to specials, it can be a little hectic. But, no matter how hectic, I always tried to carve out one or two minutes at the end for students to share what they accomplished that day. We would literally do this as we’re packing up, so it’s not like it has to be a really quiet conversation.

Sometimes they would share things like, I got two activities on my choice board done, or I got 100% on my Boom Cards, or I won the fraction game I was playing against so and so. 

Sometimes they would even say things like, you know, I was really struggling with equivalent fractions before today, but now I feel more confident. There was never really a wrong answer, but it was such a nice way to come together as a group, celebrate the small things, and wrap up in a feel-good way.

Well, friends, that is all for today’s episode. Happy Thanksgiving, eat lots of turkey, rest up, and I will see you next Tuesday.