Warm Ups Don't Work

Your students file into the classroom. They take their seats, pull out all of the daily supplies listed in your syllabus, and even before the bell rings, they are engaged in a meaningful instructional activity. This allows you the time to take attendance, check homework, and handle any other beginning of the class necessities. According to every administrator I've ever met (and most of the instructional coaches), the key to obtaining this near mythological classroom is simple-- warm ups.*

*These may be called bell ringers, lesson launches, or something similar depending on which PD or edu-book your admin/coach most recently attended/read.

"My classroom is a  4 on the Danielson Scale." -Mythological Teacher

Warm ups sound great in theory. The problem? They just don't work. 

Ok, that might be going a bit far. They don't work for me. If you are one of those awesome educators whose warm ups go off without a hitch, please share your spell book with me. Let me know how you make that magic happen because I just cannot manage it.

Left: Before the Bell Rings; Right: After Warm Up

I've tried keeping binders of problems. I've tried printed sheets the students have to turn in. I've tried using a portion of the lesson. I've tried test prep. I've tried interesting extension problems. Either I can't keep up with the marking and accountability evaporates, or I struggle to consistently curate meaningful tasks and my warm ups devolve into time-fillers. Neither option is acceptable to me, and yet, I can't abandon the practice altogether. I want my students engaged in rich tasks for the entire time they are in my room. I want that warm up magic, so how do I get it?

My answer, for now at least, is to go digital. This is an option I've ignored in the past because, "I teach math, and the capacity for students to do meaningful math on a computer is limited." (I never said I'm the brightest math teacher in the world.) Through a combination of G Suite for Education and a shortlist of web-based resources, I've been able to create consistently meaningful warm ups and hold students accountable for their daily work (without adding to my workload).

Laptops fix everything apparently.

The Process: When students sit down in my room, the first thing they do is open their laptops and head to Google Classroom. They follow the directions they find in the Warm Up post and submit some kind of proof when they are finished. Done early? Great. The homework answers are also posted on classroom. Students check their work and should be ready with questions by the time I'm done with attendance.

The Tools: The following tools have been been instrumental to my success this year.

• Google Classroom (Schedule and Topic): As I mentioned, I have centered my warm up around Google Classroom. It's a good one-stop-shop. Kids know what is expected of them, and all instructions are digital. I can usually write all warm ups for the week ahead of time by using the "Schedule" option which eliminates the pre-bell rush, and "Topics" make it easy for students to find both their warm ups and homework checks.

• Google Classroom Questions: One of my goals as a teacher is to really push students to explain their mathematical thinking in words. Some of my favorite warm ups from the before-times were questions that forced students to do just that. The problem was that few students actually did them. Using questions in classroom has allowed me to retain those meaningful tasks while holding students accountable for their work.
  
  
  
• EdPuzzle: If you've never used it, EdPuzzle is an amazing tool that allows teachers to assign videos with embedded questions. You can assign videos and watch students' progress. I avoided using EdPuzzle for a long time because I assumed it would be time consuming. Boy, was I wrong. EdPuzzle has an extensive library of educator-created videos that can be used as is or quickly adapted to fit the needs of my students. Class lists can be imported directly from Google Classroom, so students don't even need to sign up. Sharing assigned videos on Classroom takes a measly two clicks making the whole process ridiculously simple from the teacher side. My students enjoy the videos. They can provide a review of an old topic, an extension into a current topic, or an interesting diversion into something slightly off topic.

• Quizizz: Quizizz is like Kahoot only better. First, it has memes. Second, it not only has a massive database of quizzes, but it allows you to search for questions while editing an assignment, making modification quick and easy. Third, you can turn off time bonuses and set a question set as "homework" so students don't have to wait on one another to complete it. Finally, it integrates seamlessly with Google Classroom, allowing you to create an assignment in Classroom with a couple clicks. What's more, when a student finishes the Quizizz, the Classroom assignment is immediately "Turned In" with a copy of their answers as a report.

• EquatIO: Typing functions, expressions, and equations can be downright impossible, particularly as students advance into upper level math. EquatIO has been a great fix for this problem. Created by the math teacher behind gMath, this Text Help product allows students to type complex equations and insert them as images into docs and forms. This has made it possible for me to require mathematical expressions as part of warm up while maintaining this new, digital format.

The Results (so far): Today, I used an old school, half page paper for my warm up in Algebra II. I'd been having issues with the Internet in my room and thought it would be simpler. The students actually complained. They are used to their digital warm ups with immediate and individual feedback. They weren't satisfied with my hasty sorting of their responses into two piles (correct and incorrect) before discussing common errors a la "My Favorite No." They asked if we could go back to Classroom warm ups tomorrow. I can't think of a better endorsement for a recently retooled procedure.

What's Next?  It wouldn't be my style to just let things simmer for long. My next goal with warm ups is to make it more meaningful for each individual student. Every student doesn't need to be competing the same warm up problem. I hope to use the "assign to specific students" option in Google Classroom to differentiate my warm ups.

How have you found success with warm ups? Can you poke holes in or offer improvements to my method? Let me know in the comments.