Warming Up - A Short Suggestion

Here's another post based on things I've observed at the gym.  

All exercise classes start with a warm-up.  This is true whether it is a "thrive" pilates class, meant for senior citizens (which I learned after being 25 years younger than the average), or a butt-kicking spin class with Stacey A.  When it comes to our bodies, it is understood that we cannot go from the street to the red zone without some transition time. Doing something easy for five minutes allows the following forty to be more efficient.  Without the "sacrifice" of those first few minutes, we wouldn't be able to push our bodies to do more in the rest of the workout.

Do we understand that when it comes to our minds?  Because of our limited class time, we sometimes expect students to dive into the deep end as soon as the bell rings, thinking we can't afford to "sacrifice" any of our valuable time.  Perhaps, our students would benefit from the same kind of warm-up time for their brains that we would give their bodies.  Starting class with a couple of basic recall questions related to the deeper thinking we want them to do would be helpful in making their thinking more efficient.  By bringing the basic facts to the surface of their working memory, we might actually be able to push their analysis, synthesis, or evaluation abilities to do more in the remaining minutes of the class.

It's worth a try.