Mini-Lesson: Warm Up Ideas

A typical lesson plan includes a warm-up or motivating activity.  The purpose of a warm-up can include the following:

• generate students' interest in the topic
• find out what students already know about the topic
• wake them up and get them excited to learn more

Warm-ups can take many forms.  Some ideas include:

• music!  listen to a relevant song
• movies!  share a relevant movie clip
• art!  analyze photographs, posters or paintings
• stories! share a relevant story (fiction, historical fiction, oral history) that will pique students' interest
• poetry!  read a relevant poem
• vocabulary!  share important words related to the topic; perhaps using a wordle or tagxedo
• drama!  give students short scenarios and ask them to act out the scene in 30 seconds or less (want to give them props?)
• statues!  give students a scene or image and ask them to recreate it using their bodies as statues (perhaps project backgrounds for them to use)
• comics!  share a political cartoon or relevant comic
• games!  play a quick jeopardy review, hangman, tic-tac-toe (have to get question right to place an X or O), etc.
• connections! show students how the topic connects to today or a past unit of study

Here are some links for more ideas!
About.com 10 Warm-Ups for Lesson Plans