My budding love of teaching, stemming from my larger love of math and learning

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Warm-Ups

Since day one of teaching I liked the idea of a warm-up or bellringer. Originally I had student do it on a half a sheet of paper and turn them in. The result: these sheets of paper would just pile up on my desk (or at this time I didn’t really have a desk so they would pile on my in roll-a-desk), and I wouldn’t get around to grading them for weeks because I had to lesson plan or grade quizzes and homework. Then I had student do them in there notebooks at the beginning of each day, but then I didn’t check notebooks like I originally intended because I was always planning or grading quizzes and homework.

New solution: I created a warm-up sheet where each day students date the box and complete the warm-up in this box. Then at the end of the chapter I collect them. I decided this was AWESOME and I was so clever…until I collected them the first time...

A lot of students did not put any effort or pride into completing these. Students didn’t even number them when there was more than once problem to do. Problems were out of order in the boxes, and one student even had 3 different sheets even though there were only 5 days of warm-ups!

When I handed this set back, I explained that next time the warm-ups needed to be in chronological order, as well as be numbered if there is more than 1 problem. If you are absent a day, it is your responsibility to get the warm up. Once a week I am uploading a document with the warm-ups on the class website where the student can go to get the problems. I think some of them think I am kidding. But I think I have covered my butt by having it in multiple places that things need to be turned in to me in order and if they aren’t they will not be graded. Hopefully, there won’t be any arguments, but I keep you posted.

1 comment:

  1. My warm ups are part of the notebook check. But I know several teachers who check them at the end of each chapter. The thing that has always bothered me with warm-ups are the kids who sit there and complete very little if any of it. They just wait for us to work them out on the board. I may start calling on random students to work out the problems at the board.

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