Hello everyone, and welcome back to the podcast!
Well, the end of summer has officially arrived, at least here in my area. September is here. Teachers are heading back to their classrooms, and a brand-new school year is getting started.
It’s also an exciting week for my teacher candidates as they begin their student teaching placements. This week they are meeting their cooperating teachers, settling into their classrooms, and getting ready for an incredible learning experience. I know they are nervous, but I know they’re going to do great!
Speaking of the beginning of the year, in our last episode, we talked about the importance of establishing classroom routines early. We looked at routines like how students enter the classroom and how they participate in discussions, and we discussed why taking the time to teach routines pays off throughout the year.
If you missed that episode, I’d encourage you to go back and give it a listen because today’s conversation builds directly on one of those ideas.
In that episode, we briefly touched on warm-ups as part of the arrival routine, but I think they deserve a conversation of their own. I think warm-ups are often underestimated. They’re sometimes viewed as a way to fill the first few minutes of class while we take attendance or get ready for the day’s lesson.
But I think they’re one of the hardest-working routines we can put in place. Today, I want to talk about why every classroom needs a consistent warm-up routine.
Why do I think warm-ups are one of the hardest-working routines?
Because their impact begins before students ever start the academic work. It begins by giving students a chance to transition back into learning.
Think about your own mornings for a minute. Growing up, I was never much of a morning person, and honestly, I’m still not. My mom was trying to get me out the door on time, so she’d constantly remind me to hurry up or ask why I wasn’t ready yet. It caused a lot of tension at the time. Looking back, I completely understand why she did it. But at the time, it just made me feel rushed. I already knew what I needed to do—I just needed a few minutes to get myself moving.
I think many of our students need that same opportunity when they walk into our class.
They walk in carrying everything that happened during the previous class period. Maybe they just finished a math test. Maybe they were laughing with friends in the hallway. Maybe something frustrating happened during lunch. Whatever it is, they’re bringing that with them when they walk through the door.
A predictable warm-up routine gives students a chance to make that transition. They know exactly what to do. They don’t have to wait for directions or wonder what’s coming next.
That predictability changes the feel of the classroom. Instead of beginning class with uncertainty or hesitation, students begin with success. They know they can walk in, settle down, and get started on their own. Those first few minutes set the tone for everything that follows.
That small amount of independence builds confidence because students know they can get started without waiting for the teacher to direct every step.
Over time, that routine simply becomes part of the class. Students know what to expect, so getting started feels natural instead of uncertain. The first few minutes of class become less about settling in and more about engaging with the learning.
To me, that’s one of the biggest benefits of a consistent routine. We’re not asking students to flip a switch the second they walk into the room. We’re giving them a repeatable starting point that helps them shift their attention from wherever they’ve just been to the learning that’s about to happen.
Of course, there are benefits for us as teachers, too.
While students are working independently, we have a chance to greet students at the door, take attendance, answer a quick question, or check in with a student who might need a little extra support before class begins.
And if someone walks in a minute or two late, they don’t need you to stop what you’re doing and explain what’s happening. They already know the routine and can jump right in.
Warm-ups also give us valuable information about our students. As I walk around the room, I can quickly see which skills students are feeling confident with and which ones may need a little more attention. Maybe I notice several students making the same editing mistake, or I realize a writing skill needs another day of practice. Those quick observations help me make better instructional decisions.
One quick note before we move on because I know you’ll ask. Do you grade the warm ups? I think warm-ups work best when they’re kept low stakes. Personally, I collect students’ warm-ups because I think accountability is important, but I don’t grade them every week.
Instead, I choose one week’s warm-up at random to score. Students never know ahead of time which one it will be, so they’re encouraged to put forth their best effort every day. It keeps students accountable without creating an overwhelming grading load, and it still gives me valuable information about how they’re progressing.
But let’s get back to the warm-up itself.
If students are going to spend five or ten minutes working on a warm-up every day, I want that time to have a purpose. I don’t want it to be busy work or something I hand students simply because I need to fill a few minutes before the lesson begins. I want those minutes to contribute to their learning.
For me, warm-ups have always been about practicing and reinforcing skills. This is not the place to introduce brand-new concepts. Instead, they’re an opportunity to revisit important skills through short, manageable activities that students can complete independently.
That’s one of the reasons I like having a consistent routine that revisits different skills throughout the week. Some days students might spend a few minutes writing, while other days they may practice editing or work with vocabulary. The routine stays familiar, but the focus changes just enough to keep students engaged.
I also like that variety because it reflects what we actually do in an ELA classroom. Reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking aren’t isolated skills. They all work together, and a warm-up routine gives us an opportunity to revisit each of them throughout the year without feeling like we have to stop everything for a review lesson.
That’s important because mastery doesn’t happen from just one lesson or unit. It happens through repeated opportunities to practice, make mistakes, and try again. A warm-up routine gives us a chance to revisit important skills long after we’ve wrapped up the unit.
Think about vocabulary for a minute. We don’t expect students to remember a new word simply because we taught it once. We introduce it, use it in context, come back to it later, and continue exposing students to it throughout the year. Over time, those repeated encounters help the word become part of their vocabulary instead of something they learned for a quiz and quickly forgot.
I think the same idea applies to almost every skill we teach in ELA. Maybe students practiced identifying figurative language during one unit or worked on writing strong thesis statements a few weeks ago. Without opportunities to revisit those skills, it’s easy for students to forget them or lose confidence in using them. Warm-ups create those opportunities in a way that feels manageable for both students and teachers.
When you step back and look at the school year as a whole, those five or ten minutes start to add up. Instead of practicing a skill once and moving on, students have dozens of opportunities to apply what they’ve already learned. They continue strengthening their reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking a little bit at a time. Those small moments of practice may not seem significant on any given day, but together they create a strong foundation that supports everything else we do throughout the year.
I also think a consistent warm-up routine does something we don’t always think about. It helps shape the culture of our classroom.
Think about it for a minute. Whatever we choose to do consistently becomes part of our class culture. If students walk in every day knowing they’re going to read, write, edit, work with vocabulary, or think critically about language, those aren’t activities we do once in a while. They’re simply part of what we do.
I think that’s important because it changes how students view those skills. Instead of seeing grammar or vocabulary as something we cover during one unit and then move on, students begin to understand that these skills matter all year long. Reading and writing aren’t separate events—they’re habits we continue building every day.
Eventually, that consistency becomes part of the rhythm of the classroom. Students expect to begin thinking as soon as they walk through the door. They know that every class starts with an opportunity to practice, reflect, or strengthen a skill they’ve learned before. I think that’s one of the reasons warm-ups can have such a lasting impact. They aren’t just preparing students for today’s lesson—they’re helping establish the kind of classroom we’re creating all year long.
So now that I’ve hopefully convinced you that warm-ups are worth the time, let’s talk about what that might look like in practice.
The good news is it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, I think the simpler the routine, the more successful it usually is because, for the most part, students are completing these activities independently.
One approach I’ve seen many teachers use very successfully is simply reviewing the previous day’s learning. They might ask a question about yesterday’s lesson, have students solve a problem, or write a quick response to check for understanding. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach, and I know it works well for a lot of teachers.
However, for me, it always felt like one more thing I had to come up with every day. It depended on what we had done the day before, and I found myself creating a new warm-up every afternoon while I was planning the next lesson.
That’s one of the reasons I eventually settled on a weekly routine instead. Instead of reinventing the warm-up every day, I knew Mondays were vocabulary, Tuesdays were writing, Wednesdays were editing, and so on. It gave me a predictable structure, and it gave my students one too.
Let me give you an example. On Mondays, we focused on vocabulary. Students worked with words by exploring synonyms and antonyms, writing sentences, or using context clues to determine meaning. Sometimes I introduced a new word we’d encounter during the week, and other times we revisited words we had learned earlier in the year.
Tuesdays were dedicated to writing. Sometimes students responded to a prompt. Other times they practiced a writing skill we had been working on. Occasionally we’d watch a short video and students would write a response or reflect on what they had seen.
Wednesdays were editing days. Students practiced correcting grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure using skills we had already learned. Thursdays were set aside for reading skills, and Fridays often gave students an opportunity to reflect on their independent reading or respond to something they had read during the week.
What I liked about that approach was that it simplified planning for me, but it also created consistency for my students.
That experience inspired me to create my Daily ELA Warm-Ups. I wanted a system that was purposeful, easy to implement, and consistent from the first week of school through the last.
I created these warm-ups while teaching 8th grade and shared them with my grade-level team. Since then, hundreds of teachers have brought them into their own class. If you’re looking for a year’s worth of warm-ups that are already organized, thoughtfully planned, and ready to use, I’d love for you to take a look. I’ll link them in today’s show notes.
And if your school year has already begun, don’t feel like you’ve missed your opportunity. It’s perfectly okay to pause, teach a new routine, and practice it with your students. In fact, that’s something we do all year long. Whenever we introduce a new procedure or realize something isn’t working as well as we’d hoped, we take the time to revise and reteach. Warm-up routines are no different.
Whether you create your own warm-up routine or use a resource that’s already done for you, I hope you’ll be intentional about those first few minutes of class. They may only take five or ten minutes, but they’re an opportunity to build routines, reinforce important skills, and help students make the transition into learning every single day.
Next time, we’ll wrap up our Back-to-School series by talking about how to build meaningful academic conversations with your students. We’ll explore simple strategies that help students gain the confidence to participate, respond to one another’s ideas, and engage in purposeful discussions.
Thank you for spending part of your day with me. Until next time, I hope your school year is off to a great start.