Do you ever get that AMAZING feeling when your students are understanding EXACTLY what you are trying to teach them??!?!?
It leaves you on cloud nine and fist pumping the air!!!
It is magical...UNBEATABLE!!!
...
and then the next day comes and it as if that lesson never took place. You feel as if you obviously taught a different class because you KNOW they had it yesterday/two days ago!
I mean its only been a day or two!!!
Well that's memory for you! It is a fickle thing!
Moving learning from short term to long term memory may seem hard but through the use of warm ups it can become a lot easier!!!
Warm ups are basically a review of both past lessons and content you have covered or was taught in previous years!
As its name implies it 'warms' your little learners' minds up ready to learn something new by reminding them about their prior knowledge!!!
Now it is NOT about reciting and drilling sums!
And if you know anything about me you know I AM NOT ABOUT THAT DULL BORING DRILLS!
So add some fun!!! Don't sit down and count find some videos, do some jumping jacks!!!
Here is a glimpse of some of my Maths Warm UP!! :)
Counting To 100
I love dancing and music! It is just incredible what you can teach through music!!
I think it is important to not get bored with the song so we have a selection and the students choose the one they want to do for the day!!!
What Comes Next?
We pretend we are trains chugging along and then toot our horn as we call out the number that comes next!
Count on From
We pick different starting numbers to begin counting from and jump around the classroom from these starting points!
Double Jumping Jacks
Yes that is right we do jumping jacks!
We call our double fact answer out to one jumping jack!
Expanded Notation
We pretend we have a balloon that is getting bigger (moving our hands further apart for each number) and then POP the balloon by clapping and saying the number this equals!
This is just an easy stretch from the bottom of the floor, creating an arch as we come up and return to the floor on the other side - creating a RAINBOW!!!
All while calling out our rainbow fact!
Skip Counting
These videos are amazing! Sometimes we groove to a couple or sometimes we make a circle and clap our 3's or 4's together!
Skip Counting by 10's from any starting point
We LOVE stomping around like a dinosaur all while counting by 10's from different starting points like 90,140, 55 or 16!
Well that was just a small GLIMPSE of some of the things we do in our Year 2 class Maths Warm Up!
Hopefully you got some new ideas!!!
What do you do to help your kids transfer their learning to long term memory?
