Warm-ups in Math Education

I see math warm-ups as an interregnal part of the class. Students are coming in from different subjects and using different parts of the brain and the warm-up can be used to focus them into the mindset of math. It is no different than lifting weights when you switch from a chest lift to a back lift. You do a warm up set to get the body to realize it is going to have to use a new muscle group. I plan to use math warm-ups as a way to stress the importance of the previous days work along with future lessons. I feel making word problems that relate the previous days lesson to real life scenarios is a great way to get kids to buy into math along with getting them thinking about math in different contexts.
Warm-ups also allow students to know what to expect when they walk into the class. I am a strong believer in routine that is consistent and fair. Students know that when they come into class and the bell rings they need to be working on the warm up.
Warm-ups should be no longer than 5-7 minutes to do the problems and review the answers. The purpose of the warm-up is for review of material not a time for students to mess around. I believe constantly changing the style of the warm-up to keep students engaged is also important. For example having students work in pairs vs. individual can be one change. Another one could be passing out markers to students and those with the markers are assigned to do the problem on the board.
One thing I have noticed recently that has bothered me is that in Salem-Keizer the warm-ups are centered on review for the OAKS. The district seems to rely on the warms-up to teach/review the material that the class hasn’t covered yet that will be on the OAKS. This leads to warms up lasting much longer because instead of review it becomes a teaching session. Instead CMP should be structured around what the majority of the students are going to need to know in order to pass the math class. Last year one of my colleagues watched 1/3 of the 7th grade OAKS test be on volume but the teacher did not teach volume until the second to last week of school. The warm ups were the only time the students had seen volume the entire year.
I believe that warm-ups can be a great way to teach test taking strategy. Students can go through the warm-ups and mark which ones are easy, medium, and hard. Once they have identified the easy ones the students can attempt to do the easy ones, then the medium ones and then the hard ones. They can use this same strategy when they take the OAKS test instead of getting frustrated and losing precious time on the hard questions.