Chapter 3: Using Math Warm-Ups in Guided Math
"Okay class, turn to page 31 and let's begin class."
"Good morning. Take out your homework and let's go over it."
Either of these sound familiar? Maybe you've your own opening line to add to the list of "The Most Boring Way to Start Math Class Ever". Perhaps these are more along the lines of what intermediate through high school students experience when they attend a math class, as I've not seen this in K-2 as often.
How do your students being their math day? Calendar? Homework review? Centers?
Consider the following:
"Participating in a variety of brief mathematical activities during the first 20-30 minutes of the day leads students to make subtle mental shifts into the world of mathematical awareness and learning." (Sammons, 2013).
Most kindergarten teachers that I know do a great job of introducing the math portion of their day to their students. They have a great numeracy routine that makes real-world connections to the classroom: calendar. Sammons discusses this math stretch routine to some extent in this chapter. Usually a teacher-led discussion about the number of days the students have been in school occurs and the kids then spend some time, after enough days have passed, bundling sticks to show groups of ten. They already working on the early concepts of our base ten system but they're also experiencing how something everyone uses, a calendar, is based on math!
Older students don't use calendar but there are many alternatives to beginning math instruction instead of a homework check. There are so many ways to better spend 15 minutes of your math block. One of my favorite warm up routines is called "Counting Around the Class". I have used it numerous times in intermediate grades for skip counting practice to help my 4th graders with their multiplication. This past week, I had the pleasure of working with two groups of 3rd graders who were being introduced to multiplication as repeated addition. They were just beginning the steps to learning the meaning of multiplication using bar/tape diagrams, arrays, repeated addition sentences and multiplication sentences. I wanted to use this routine. So we came back from lunch the second day I was with them and I asked the kids to stand in a circle. I told them the rules and we started skip counting by 2s. Most kids find this easy to do so I always start with it to teach the warm-up and when they get good at it, we move on to more difficult numbers. Each student said the number that came next and when we reached 24 (which was said by the last student), I stopped them and asked them to consider the following:
There are 12 kids in this class. How did I know how many students were in class today?
Can someone state a repeated addition sentence for what we just did? (Someone says 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 while I record it on the board and then I say:) Wow! That took quite a bit of time! Look at how long that is! I wonder if there is a more efficient way to write that mathematically?
And so on for about 5 minutes. We tried with different numbers (counted by 3s, 10s, 4s) and had similar conversations. Then we sat down and started discussing the meaning of multiplication. The students' were primed and ready for that conversation!
Reflection questions for this week:
Q1: Think about how you start your math class. Is there a mathematical connection?
Q2: What are some upcoming concepts your class will be learning? What are some math stretches that apply to these concepts that you can use to increase student learning?
Q3: Did you see a math stretch in chapter 3 that you would like to try? Or perhaps one you've done in the past and would like to bring back?
Read for next week: Chapter 4 'Using Guided Math with the Whole Class'. For those of you who are local, we're meeting face to face so feel free to bring some samples of math stretches that you tried this week!
