Try This Before Spring Break and Win

1. Plan a warm up for a lesson (a warm up must be something students can do on their own and does not require the teacher to instruct afterwards.)
2. Put the warm up items in order of difficulty.
3. Double the number of items you require and continue with difficulty ladder. (If you want five warm up math problems and go from easiest to most difficult, add five more, now ten problems total continuing in level of difficulty).
4. Instruction given to students should be for them to work on the warm up until you call time. DO NOT TELL THEM THE BENCHMARK (problem 5)
5. Monitor progress by time. When the struggling students get through the benchmark (problem 5 in the above example) call time.
6. Briefly journal or capture any of your personal observations or insights to bring to Thursday morning's in-service.