Daily Math Warm-up Routines

Act It Out is a kindergarten routine that allows students to represent story problems (MP4). Students listen to a story problem and act it out, connecting language to mathematical representations. This routine provides an opportunity for students to connect with the storytelling tradition, typically found in ethnically diverse cultures. 

Questions About Us is a kindergarten routine that allows students to consider number concepts in a familiar context. Students analyze data collected about the students, and answer questions such as: “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” Using data that represents students helps them to see math in the world around them.

While Choral Counting offers students the opportunity to practice verbal counting, the recorded count is the primary focus of the routine. As students reflect on the recorded count, they make observations, predict upcoming numbers in the count, and justify their reasoning (MP7 and MP3).

Estimation Exploration encourages students to use what they know and what they can see to problem-solve for a rough evaluation of a quantity rather than giving a “wild guess.” The estimates can be in the context of measurement, computation, or numerosity—estimating about a large group of objects (MP2).

How Many Do You See? helps early math learners develop an understanding of counting and quantity through subitizing and combining parts of sets to find the total in a whole collection. In later grades, this routine encourages students to use operations and groupings that make finding the total number of dots faster. Through these recorded strategies, students look for relationships between the operations and their properties (MP7).

Notice and Wonder invites all students into a mathematical task with two low-stakes prompts: “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” By thinking about things they notice and wonder, students gain entry into the context and might have their curiosity piqued. Students learn to make sense of problems (MP1) by taking steps to become familiar with a context and the mathematics that might be involved. Note: Notice and Wonder and I Notice/I Wonder are trademarks of NCTM and the Math Forum and are used in these materials with permission.

The sequence of problems in a Number Talk or Algebra Talk encourages students to look for structure and use repeated reasoning to evaluate expressions and develop computational fluency (MP7 and MP8). As students share their strategies, they make connections and build on one another’s ideas, developing conceptual understanding.

The True or False routine structure encourages students to reason about numerical expressions and equations using base-ten structure, meaning and properties of operations, and the meaning of the equal sign. Often, students can determine whether an equation or inequality is true or false without doing any direct computation (MP7).

The What Do You Know About _____? routine elicits students’ ideas of numbers, place value, operations, and groupings through visuals of quantity, expressions, and other representations. It is an invitational prompt that could include such things as understanding where students see numbers embedded in various contexts or how students compare and order numbers.

Which One Doesn’t Belong? fosters a need for students to identify defining attributes and use language precisely in order to compare and contrast a carefully chosen group of geometric figures, images, or other mathematical representations (MP3 and MP6).