Once you’ve established your plan for the small group lesson, invite a group of children over to the teacher table. As teachers, we’re eager and want to jump quickly into the actual lesson, right? But you’ll better serve your students if you begin your small group time with a quick warm-up.
A good warm-up activity will help the students get engaged, excited, and focused.
Warm-ups can be familiar activities from a prior lesson. You can pretend it’s a game show with a quick round of questions to review what students have learned. Next, you could do a warm-up where the kids sort a bowl of pattern blocks by their shape. Finally, you can have them snip paper pieces for a patterning exercise. Use different hands-on activities for warm-ups to keep your students interested.
But warm-up activities don’t have to always be done at the teacher table. Have students get up and gather art supplies, math manipulatives, letter magnets, or poetry journals for your small group activity. Have the class search the room for hidden game cards they’ll be using today at the teacher table.
Remember, warm-ups should only take a couple of minutes. The purpose of the warm-up activity is to get everyone ready for the small group lesson.