I usually use my warm-up time to either access prior knowledge about what we’re going to cover in today’s lesson or review what we learned yesterday. For example, as a reading teacher, say your lesson will be about idioms. Then your warm-up could be “define what an idiom is” and “give an example.” Or provide several idioms and have them draw the literal picture (bed of roses, piece of cake, etc.). You get my drift.

Other ideas:

1.) Journal writing – there are lots of websites and books out there with journal writing tips. I observed a teacher last year ask the question around Halloween, “name 10 uses for a pumpkin other than eating it.” You should have seen some of the creative responses!

2.) Word searches or crosswords – these are great when introducing content vocabulary (word search before introducing what they mean) or reinforcing the definition (crosswords the day after introducing new vocabulary)

Are you also doing spelling? You could have the students alphabetize their words, write them three times, or sort them by given categories (parts of speech, prefix, etc.).

What I mean by accessing prior knowledge is usually story content related. For example, are you about to do a lesson on a fable? Give warm-up questions like “what is a fable” or “who is Aesop.”

Good luck.

I would do a brain teaser that deals with unscrambling or codes.

Write a famous quote , and whoever guesses correctly on their paper gets an extra point.

Have them take turns and every day, a different kid brings in an interesting news article from the paper or Internet.

Have 4-7 vocab words on the board, and tell then to write a short story using them, and have them read their story in front of the class, or have them volunteer to read theirs.

Have them pretend they are a character from a book the class is reading, and have them write a daily journal.

Write 1-3 fun facts on the board, and have them guess if they are true or false.( Or write a word and they guess if it is a true word or a false 1)

Write a sentence from the book they are reading on a piece of paper, and have them play telephone.

Start with a journal prompt or a quick write. I use it every day. Put the topic on the board and how much you want them to write. Ask them to help you process it by reading the responses they wrote. Takes about 5 minutes to write while you are taking the roll on the computer and then 5 minutes to process. You then check it each Friday to make sure they are doing the work. Mu kids love it and miss it if we do not do it.

Well, I don’t like to waste time on meaningless things that they learn nothing from. I also don’t like to give my students things that I don’t actually take a grade on. (With 7th grade, it won’t take them long to discover that you don’t really read all the journal entries, and that no grade is actually taken). Save an assignment from Monday for Tuesday. Make sure that it’s something that you have already covered, you know so they can work on their own on it. I give my easy spelling assignments for my students to start on each morning. I write the assignment on the board, and have the paper on their desks so they get started immediately. Good luck!

Put vocabulary words on the board and whoever can make the most sentences using the words gets kudos!

Or perhaps put a letter on the board and have the students write as many words as they can think of starting with that letter.

I started something called Jump Start. It was just a question about what we were studying or what they thought about something or if and what they were having difficulties about. It may be anything from looking up something in the book to what they were doing that weekend (this helped me keep in touch with them). This was GREAT. I usually gave them 5 minutes or so.

My favorite is DOL (Daily Oral Language) sentence corrections. (I teach Language Arts)

But for reading try using worksheets for the grades below yours that cover topics that your are going over in your benchmarks for example using the idioms sample, ask the 6th, 5th and 4th grade teachers for some worksheets and have the kids warm up on those. Vary them so that they match your daily lesson.

give them a small pg of questions

2 questions for every subject and it can be simple or hard depending how how you teach

i reccomend giving bounus points for every questin right

journal writing

free reading

puzzles

brainteasers

lateral thinking puzzles