Saturday, October 1, 2011

Warm-ups in Math Education

Warm ups in math education have long been a debated topic, are they really useful? Research states that daily warm ups are a useful tool given to students at the beginning of the period to review a previous topic or to introduce new material. I believe that warm ups are a great way to start a class because they give students something to accomplish of an educational nature while allowing the teacher time to take roll and perform other housekeeping duties. By providing a warm up the students now have the opportunity to independently get their minds geared towards the topic and section of math that is being reviewed or introduced. Not only can a warm up help review material, it can also check for understanding, or even assess knowledge of a new topic. I do believe that warm ups are something that every math teacher should have in their everyday lesson plans.

1 comment:

  1. Great rationale for support of warm ups in math education.

    When writing future lesson plans, one might want to refer back to the sentence in our Group Project #1 on Warm-ups that displays a wide variety of possibilities, and try to mix in all of these as time goes on.

    Since this component involves research, please add a few paragraphs that discusses a little more in depth discussion. For example what are some of the techniques you use to 'check for understanding' for 'all' students; and how do parts of your warm-ups address some of the other criteria that are also best practices?

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