The second component of my math block is a warm-up. Warm-ups are a great way to review recent material and to spiral required content and skills. Warm-ups should be short and require minimal time to review. There are many ways to format your warm-up. You just have to find the best one for you!
The picture below shows the warm-up program that I have frequently used in the classroom. It is modeled after the Mountain Math program and the Lone Star Learning TEKSas Target Practice program. It includes all of the grade-level content and skills my students were required to learn. I created 30 different questions. Each question is broad enough that I could change the numbers every other week to create a new problem. The students completed 3 of the numbered problems each day for two weeks. I then put up a new set of numbers to create 30 new questions and the process repeated.
While I will admit that this program took some time to create, once it was created, it was done and lasted the entire school year. There are, however, many ways to create your own warm-ups. Here are a few ideas:
