Whether you call them morning warm-ups, sponge activities or opening routines, it a good idea to have an activity to focus students when they arrive in the classroom. The activity\/activities you select should:<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 be self-starting<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 focus thinking<\/p>\n
*\u00a0 provide a challenge<\/p>\n
Myself, I prefer a variety of activities so the students are more likely to stay engaged day after day and week after week. And, if possible, I provide a notebook or sketch book to keep the activities organized and in one specific place.<\/p>\n
The warm-up should last only 5-8 minutes. You don’t want it to take over your day! Also, it should not be graded. Instead student activities should be discussed later in the class time, then turned in so the ‘notebook’ doesn’t wander away, never to return again. (If you have a specific place to store them where students can pick them up on entering the classroom, all the better.)<\/p>\n
How to get started<\/strong><\/p>\n Make a plan.<\/p>\n Place the daily activity on the board or post the schedule on a more permanent chart for generic activities.<\/p>\n Have the notebooks\/journals ready for pickup.<\/p>\n Choose your focused activity\/activities to reenforce a common theme worth discussing as a group.<\/p>\n Suggested ideas:<\/p>\n Answer a stimulating question based on classroom subject-matter, current news, etc.<\/p>\n Write a\u00a0 journal entry (with or without a prompt).<\/p>\n Draw a common object found in the room. (You can change the focus from literal to abstract, outline to detail, etc.)<\/p>\n Vocabulary challenge – look up 5 words to use in sentences, write antonyms or synonyms for, etc.<\/p>\n Problem solve- math, logic question, brain teaser, etc.<\/p>\n It’s fun and engaging to have a quick exercise to stretch brains as students settle in. Send me you ideas. We’ll post them in a future blog.<\/p>\n So, what to do. I like to provide a different activity for each day of the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Whether you call them morning warm-ups, sponge activities or opening routines, it a good idea to have an activity to focus students when they arrive in the classroom. The activity\/activities you select should: *\u00a0 be self-starting *\u00a0 focus thinking *\u00a0 provide a challenge Myself, I prefer a variety of activities so the students are more\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expectations-misbehavior-communication-clarifying-monitoring","category-organizers-games-activities","category-teacher-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paddyeger.com\/blog\/educatingamericablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}