Daily math review doesn’t have to be boring. Use these activities along with our Digital Math Warm Up slides to add some movement and problem-solving into your regular, daily math review.
When I think back to when I was a kid, some of the lessons that stand out to me most are when teachers found a way to incorporate unexpected activities and movement into our review games.
Whether we were racing to see who could name the largest bones of the body or shooting balls into the trashcan as part of our spelling and vocabulary review, our teachers were always finding creative ways to make everyday activities more fun.
We have posted before about the effectiveness and engaging nature of our Digital Math Warm-Ups. If you are unfamiliar with our review slides, you can learn all about them in this post (180 Days of ‘Done-For-You’ Math Warm-Ups for 4th and 5th Grade), or you can find them in the store here.
These Digital Math Warm Ups are typically used with Google Slides, but we have come up with a few ways that you could take these daily math review slides and turn them into hands-on classroom activities that will break up and add a little extra fun into the day.
4 New Activities to Add to Your Daily Math Review
Activity #1| Reverse Review
Typically with these Digital Math Warm Ups students are given the warm up slides and asked to find the answers, but in this Reverse Review activity, students are given the answers and asked to go find the question.
To prep this activity, pick 5-10 slides from the resource and hang them up around the room. Then use a stack of sticky notes or notecards to write down the answers for each of the slides.
On the day of the activity, hand out the answers (either on sticky notes or index cards) and ask students to search the room for the questions that go with their answers. Once they find the question that corresponds with their answer, they will stick the answer to the sheet.
Options:
- Have 1-2 students acting as the ‘checkers.’ Their job is to move around and find incorrect answers (if there are any). If they find an incorrect answer, they will pull the answer and give it to someone who has already finished their task. That person will then try to find the correct place for the answer.
- Complete the activity in teams. Break students up into 4 groups, and make 4 copies of each slide. The group will be working as quickly as they can to correctly get their answers and questions put together faster than the other teams.
Activity #2 | Create New Task Cards
Each of the Digital Math Warm Up slides is composed of the same parts, which makes them perfect for cutting up into new task cards for daily math review. If you cut each card along the dotted lines, you’ll be left with 3 sections from each card (The Number of the Day, Quick Check, and Spiral Review).
Once these pieces are cut out, consider some of the suggestions from this post for activities that you can do with the new task cards. Get creative with the task cards. They are great to use as cards for other games or use them in the ways that you currently use other task cards with your classes.
Another simple activity to use with Spiral Review and Quick Check task cards is to create a simple matching game. Using paper that is the same size, write the answers to the Quick Check or Spiral Review on the paper, and lay them out in the style of a memory or matching game. As students find corresponding answers and questions, they get to keep the matches. The student with the most pairs at the end wins.
Activity #3 | Puzzles
Print some of the Daily Math Warm up Slides onto standard-sized paper, then cut each page up to create puzzles. To keep all the pieces organized, place them in boxes or baggies.
Pass out one set of puzzle pieces to each student in the class, and then give them some type of cue to begin. At the same time, all the students will dump out their pieces and put their puzzles together. Once their puzzle is complete, they will write down the answers to the math warm up questions on a separate piece of paper.
The nice thing about this activity is that you can reuse the same puzzles many times as long as students receive different sets each time.
Options:
- Set a timer and ask students to document how long it took them to complete the task. Use the times to create a leaderboard or to allow students to practice graphing their results.
- Use the same puzzles for one week and create a classroom competition. You may consider a leaderboard or even create teams.
- Use the puzzles as a single mini-game in a fun activity day before or after a school break.
Activity #4 | Relay Races
Relay races are always a fun way to get students moving. As always, races like these are often best when students have the space to really run or move fast.
On one wall, tape up a printed copy of one of the warm up slides or even several warm up slides. Then separate students into groups. The number of groups should equal the number of stations of slides you’ve set up.
Each group will be tasked with the goal of answering all the questions on the warm up slides correctly. Each person from the group will run up to the slides and pick one section to answer. Once they’ve finished, they will run back to the group and hand off their ‘baton’ (probably a marker) to the next person in the group. Then that person will run up and either change one of the previous answers or answer another section of the warm ups. Then they will run back, and the next student will go.
This pattern will continue until the group believes they have all the answers and they are all correct. At that point, they will raise their hands, and the teacher will check their answers. If they have answered all the sections correctly, the race is over. If any answers are wrong, the race will continue until one of the groups has all of the answers complete and correct.
Sometimes blending old, familiar ideas like relay races and puzzles, with review and practice like we have with these math warm ups is all it takes to add a fresh coat of paint to everyday activities. If you are looking for even more ways to review math with your 4th and 5th grade classes, check out other math resources here, and be sure to check out some of these math-related posts!
