Thoughts on Warm-ups

For my classes, we use the same format for warm-ups every day.  Students come in, take out paper and pencil, and do a quick write to answer a question.  After writing for about 5 minutes, they turn and talk about their answers with a partner, then each pair shares their answer with the class.  As a structure, this gets the students focused in on a question, it starts them discussing, and it will tell me what at least half the class knows about the question.  And because of the two different types of discussion, those students who are confused or need extra help get the start of that help.

Specifically, when I start to teach about a new topic, I create warm-ups that start students thinking about the topic in non-academic terms.  For example, to start my unit on satire, I would show the students the following picture:

And simply ask them to write about what they notice.  Specifically:
1. What story is this picture telling?
2. Is it a happy or sad picture?  How do you know?
3. Is this picture asking the viewer to change in any way?  How do you know?

These questions seem overly simple, but they are perfect to engage students in the complicated topic of satire without overwhelming them with a lot of terminology.  Each question points to an element of the larger topic of satire and as we deconstruct the warm-up as a class, I have the opportunity to insert academic terminology into the discussion.