DigiTechTeach

  • Berkeley Unified School District

Warm Up Routines

October 27, 2017

After leaving the hubbub and buzz of a middle school hallway during passing period, I love walking into classrooms where there are clearly defined routines and there’s a peaceful calm that settles over the class from the moment the bell rings.

In Anne Frost’s history class at Longfellow, that soothing calmness is so inviting.  Anne has a daily warm up routine which integrates a tech tool, Desmos, with the current topic she’s teaching.  When students first enter class, they have exactly 2 minutes to get out the materials they need, take out homework and write down any new assignments.  This is done in silence and is followed by an equally quiet trip across the room to pick up their Chromebook.

Each morning, students independently do a “card sort” in Desmos, focused on vocabulary and big themes from the previous day’s class.  When I visited her class last week they were studying the American Revolution and their card sort included the following questions.  For this card sort, students dragged the vocabulary to fill in the blanks for each question.

While this type of vocabulary practice could certainly be done on paper, there are some advantages of using a simple technology tool, such as Desmos for students’ responses.

  1. Several students remarked to me that doing this on the computer was a lot faster and more fun for them than doing it on paper.
  2. Students excitedly told me that they love using Desmos for their warm ups because it’s so easy to change mistakes if they realize they have matched cards inaccurately.
  3. Desmos automatically grades card sorts!  Most 7th & 8th grade teachers have well over 100 students.  In Desmos, all responses from each class period can be seen on a single screen with student names in red who have errors and in green who don’t.  Teachers can see who needs help and give feedback immediately.
  4. All of Ms. Frost’s warm ups are reusable for another class period or for next year, already organized for her within Desmos.

What was most impressive to watch was HOW MUCH PRODUCTIVE WORK both on and off computers students did during the 10 minute warm up routine. In just 10 minutes, students independently got and signed onto their Chromebooks, completed the Desmos card sort on the American Revolution, opened their Google Classroom to find their notes from a previous day’s class, requested a paper quiz on whatever reading passage they had most recently completed, took that open-notes quiz, using the Google Doc note-taking template which they had previously completed in Google Classroom, and then began a new reading passage.

A peaceful, well defined warm-up routine is such a powerful way to start class, and Desmos and Google Classroom are two tools which made Ms. Frost’s routine so effective.

You can see her Desmos card sort in action below.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Subscribe to DigiTechTeach via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,476 other subscribers

Recent Posts

  • New Elementary School Teachers Participate in Tech Training
  • New Databases for Students
  • Students Create Videos in Spanish Using Adobe Spark
  • Berkeley Students Log Hours of Coding During Hour of Code
  • How Audiobooks Can Help Engage Young Readers
Jessica Lee

Jessica Lee is the Coordinator for Library Services for BUSD and DigiTech lead. Prior to this year, she was a teacher librarian on special assignment supporting elementary schools and the Teacher Librarian at Willard Middle School for 13 years.
Jennifer Nguyen

Jennifer Nguyen is the BUSD TK-8 Instructional Technology Teacher on Special Assignment. She has over 14 years of experience working in both public and private schools, as a classroom teacher and technology integration coach.
Eric Silverberg

Eric Silverberg is a BUSD Teacher Librarian on Special Assignment, supporting libraries and instructional technology and Digital Citizenship. He has over 20 years experience working in public schools, as a classroom teacher, a teacher librarian, an arts coordinator, a drama/music specialist and a digital media teacher.
Mia Gittlen

Mia Gittlen was the BUSD K-8 Instructional Technology Teacher on Special Assignment from 2017-2019. She has taught English and history/social studies for eleven years. She also actively participates in East Bay CUE and the Krause Center of Innovation--two organizations focused on inspiring innovative learning.
Allison Krasnow

Allison Krasnow was the BUSD K-8 Instructional Technology Coordinator and a Teacher on Special Assignment from 2013-2018. She has taught grades 4-8 and is now teaching math at Willard Middle School.

©2023 Berkeley Unified School District - Instructional Tech · All Rights Reserved