![Math facts warm-up challenge](https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/none/path/s03f5891f8d9f9cb5/image/id7de9bce1af37f1d/version/1488840360/math-facts-warm-up-challenge.jpg)
A warm-up is a short activity at the start of a lesson to jump-start students' thinking. Warm-ups have many purposes including:
- to introduce a new topic
- to reinforce skills
- to motivate students
- to prepare students to learn
- to assess how much students know
Warm-up time is also a great time to promote higher order thinking. For example, students who have mastered the math facts may be bored with the following warm-up:
![](https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=1030x10000:format=jpg/path/s03f5891f8d9f9cb5/image/i06b04b36cc505c5a/version/1390089891/image.jpg)
Fact masters need the "benefits of a proper warm-up" such as,
![Math facts warm up challenge](https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=610x10000:format=jpg/path/s03f5891f8d9f9cb5/image/i645d1b3d62455cd8/version/1488840384/math-facts-warm-up-challenge.jpg)
Needless to say, the second warm-up:
- is more challenging.
- reinforces relationships between facts.
- requires higher-order thinking!