Beginning of Class Routine Revamp: Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my new beginning of class routine:  Wonder Monday, Two Way Tuesday, What's the Question Wednesday, Number Talk Thursday and Quick Draw Friday.  This routine has gotten me through the first quarter of the year, and I have really enjoyed each of these days.  I have enjoyed the different aspects of math that they encourage.....from geometry with Quick Draw to number sense with Number Talks and Two Way Tuesday.  I've enjoyed seeing the power of What's the Question Wednesday both as a formative assessment tool, and to encourage creativity.  Wonder Monday has sparked many great discussions, and even led a student to actually find the cost of filling a pool with jello....which was over $800 by the way!

But, I have also discovered some other cool resources that would also make great warm-ups.  So I'm thinking I may introduce some of these other ideas from time to time.  Here is my next set of ideas for an interesting way to start class.

• Math at Work Monday:  I found this awesome website that has a section called Math at Work Monday.  There are interviews with all kinds of people about how they use math at their jobs.  What a great way to open my kids eyes to the power of what we're learning!  I also found out about this cool Chrome extension called Insert Learning that lets you put questions, videos and other content into a website for students to access.  Tomorrow, I'm planning my warm up to be Math at Work Monday while I use Insert Learning!
• Use a Picture to Prove....:  I was inspired by Jo Boaler's book Mathematical Mindsets for this idea.  One of the ways that she recommends opening up a task to make it richer is to have students make a visual to go with it.  I think this could have some real power to get at the heart of some difficult topics...like fractions!

• Would You Rather?:  The idea is to give a choice like, Would you rather have a 1 foot stack of quarters or a $20 bill?  I got this idea from the Would You Rather Math website, which has lots of great examples.  However it's also really easy to come up with your own!

• What's the Story (version 1):  I was so excited when I found the Graphing Stories website.  This is sooooo cool, and I think the practice graphing would be so helpful and spark tons of great discussion!
• What's the Story (version 2):  Find a graph, and have the students write the action that matches the story.  Seems like this would alternate well with What's the Story version 1....going back and forth between seeing the action and then making the graph, vs. seeing the graph and describing the action.

• What's the Story (version 3):  Find some data, and have students draw the conclusion or decide on the caption from it.  We are in a world with so much data, but how much practice do we give kids at deciding what the data is actually telling us?

If you would like a template for these routines, click here for a simple Google Slides that has a slide for each idea (including the ideas in my Beginning of Class Routine Revamp: Part 1 post!)