Why use video warm-ups?
I explained in my previous post how I came up with the video warm-ups. Through this process, I discovered many ways in which these warm-ups benefited my students for both Algebra 2 and Calculus courses. Here are my top reasons: Purposeful Warm-Up: Not once had I ever used a warm-up in my classroom prior to using a video warm-up. I never understood their purpose. The ones I had seen contained similar questions that were on the homework. I was able to see each student’s level of understanding from their homework, so there was no need to ask them the same question again with different numbers. I wanted warm-ups or a “do now” to have a very specific purpose that was useful to me and my students. The purpose of the video warm-up was 1 – to see if they watched the video and 2 – to assess how much they learned from it, which then helped me get a general understanding of how easy or difficult this lesson was going to be for them. Since creating my video warm-ups, I have found other cool and unique warm-ups that are purposeful as well. Learn more about those warm-ups here. Increases Pacing: I was concerned about the Advanced Placement pacing for Calculus. We needed to get through a lot of content, in a short amount of time. I wasn’t going to have time to do 3 examples for each topic within a section AND allow time for group collaboration activities, projects, discussions, etc. I quickly realized that the video warm-ups gave the students that extra head start they needed in order for us to move quickly through the content in class and have more time for other types of learning strategies. Enhances Interest: Watching videos before a lesson enhanced students interest in the new content. Students came to class ready to learn, especially if it was a topic of interest to them or they found easy to understand based on the video. Activates Prior Knowledge: Often the video activated knowledge the students learned on the topic from a previous course. This helped them make better connections. Builds Students' Confidence: I’m going to take this right from one of the reviews I received from another teacher that used my warm-ups. “I just finished Chapter 2 and this tool was extremely helpful throughout the entire unit! My students really found that watching the videos prior to class helped them to better understand the material in class. They told me they felt more willing to participate in class as well! Calculus can be scary for students, but these videos and warm-ups can boost students' confidence when it comes to difficult material.” – Anonymous Differentiation: The videos allowed me to differentiate without even knowing it. Some of the videos offered enough information for a few students to come to class and start right in on the activity for the day or the homework with no need of any assistance. For the others, I still had the time to go through the notes and completely explain the content. And even for those that still needed a little extra help after the class period, I had that covered too. Which leads me to the next benefit… Review Tool: Students can go back and watch the videos at any time. I give them all the links in one document for each unit, so it’s very organized for them. Even if the video I selected didn’t quite cover everything, often the “up next” feature on YouTube suggests another video that will help them. This is also an amazing tool to use before final exams, as we all know students forget things. Now, you can direct them to watch the video again for help. Yes, of course, we can help them ourselves, but encouraging kids to take ownership over their own learning is very important as well and this tool is an easy way to do that. Integrates Technology: How many times a week do we scroll through our Facebook feed to stop and watch a video that someone posted? Well, for me, it’s more than I want to admit. Watching short videos is part of our daily lives now, so let’s bring it into our classroom in a constructive way. Modified Flipped Classroom: Research has shown that a flipped classroom has incredible results. I’m not quite ready to flip my whole class, maybe someday. For now, I enjoy the benefits and balance of the “modified” flipped classroom. These are the many advantages for using video warm-ups in your classroom. Wow, aren’t these great?! Maybe you are wondering where the statistical data is to support these benefits? I don’t have it. I’m a teacher just like you. We create resources for our classrooms in hopes that they will work well. I am excited to share that I found one that works for my students and me too. The hours (and hours) I spent (still spending) finding quality videos for my students is all worth it. Yes, it’s boring to do and I have fallen asleep at the computer a few times, but that’s because I don’t just use the first video I find on a topic. I search and search until I find one that fits the right time frame and covers just what I want it to for each lesson. All this, because I love the way my students learn using this method! In case you missed it. Here are the other posts on video warm-ups: Want to use video warm-ups in your classroom? Click below:
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How did I come up with video warm-ups?
It all started when I was asked to teach AP Calculus. For some teachers, that may be no big deal. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine….I was not a math major. My major was accounting. Therefore, I only took a few math courses in college. Regardless, I was excited and eager for the challenge. I remember loving Calculus in high school and college. I was sent to an AP summer seminar for training. Oh boy, I quickly learned I was in over my head. Everyone in my seminar was a math major and had taken several levels of Calculus in college. The last time I took a calculus course, was 14 years prior when I was a freshman in college. I was definitely a little rusty. The seminar was a weeklong and there were moments I thought the instructor and my classmates were speaking a different language. Luckily, I made friends with a nice group of ladies that took me under their wing and helped me through it all. I decided that I could do this, but it was going to require a lot of hard work the first year. I received a lot of awesome resources from the seminar that I planned on implementing in my class. However, I was still nervous. I knew I’d be re-teaching a lot of the topics to myself and therefore not as solid in my knowledge of the content as I was for the other classes I taught. This made me realize that I cannot be the only instructor my Calculus students could rely on for information. Not a problem, right? I can just ask a math colleague to assist when needed, right? Wrong. I am a one-person department. Yep, I was about to teach AP Calculus for the first time, along with my three other courses – Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Precalculus and no other person was around to help me. I had to come up with a plan. That’s when it dawned on me that there are tons of math videos on YouTube. I spent the rest of my summer and part of the school year, finding videos on YouTube to coincide with every section in my textbook that I needed to cover for the AP exam. I didn’t want to use the videos to flip my classroom, because I still wanted to be my student’s main instructor, and answer any questions they had as we worked our way through the content. But, I did want them to be introduced to each topic by another math teacher through a short video, so they would come to class with some prior knowledge of the day’s lesson objective. Then, before I started the lesson, I would give them a warm-up based on what was covered in the video. I did this for two reasons, to confirm they watched the video and to help me gage to what extent they understood it. After we got through the first unit, I could tell it was working. The students liked learning from several teachers and seeing the content taught a few times helped them grasp the material quickly. I shared a few units of the warm-ups with a colleague of mine from another school because he shared several of his resources with me and I wanted to return the favor. A short while later, he emailed me asking for more video warm-ups. He said his students loved them and wanted more! That's when I knew I was onto something. I began making them for my Algebra 2 class as well. And guess what, they loved them too! Through this process I discovered several other benefits video warm-ups have, which I will share in another post. Here are my other posts on video warm-ups: Wondering where you can find my video warm-ups?
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What is a video warm-up?
I have been using video warm-ups in my classes since 2013, but yet, I don’t think anyone outside of my classroom even knows what a video warm-up is! Maybe you stumbled across Math Giraffe’s blog post on warm-ups and saw she shared my method and briefly explains how it works. Either way, I have been wanting to share this very different style of warm-up for a long time. Specifically, what are video warm-ups, how did I come up with the idea, and why are they great for any classroom. So let’s get right down to it. A video warm-up is a way to introduce the next lesson before students come to class. |
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I'm an educational blogger and curriculum designer. I am enthusiastic about providing creative, comprehensive, and clear resources for middle and high school math teachers. My goal is to create content that is easy to implement for the teacher, and helps students Connect Knowledge with Understanding - One Lesson at a Time.
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