Maths Warm Up: Timed Target Number ⭐️ The Sydney Teacher

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Maths Warm-Up: Timed Target Number

Here's a quick maths warm-up you can use any day of the week.

Timed Target Number is a low floor, high ceiling task that requires literally no prep!

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Timed Target Number

It is a fun number sense activity that challenges students to represent a target number in as many different ways as possible. It's a simple, no-prep primary maths warm-up that's perfect for building fluency and mathematical reasoning.

How It Works

Choose a target number, such as 10, and give students 2 minutes to write as many different number sentences as they can that equal the target. Encourage them to think beyond basic addition and subtraction by using a variety of operations and mathematical concepts.

For Example:

8 + 2
5 + 5
3 × 3 + 1
√100
½ × 20

Challenge students to be as creative as possible and celebrate unique solutions!

Why It's So Good

• Builds number sense, mental maths, and flexible mathematical thinking.

• Encourages creativity by allowing multiple solution strategies.

• Takes just 2 minutes, making it an ideal maths lesson starter.

• Can be adapted for fractions, decimals, negative integers, and other maths topics.

• Easy to repeat with different target numbers.

Timed Target Number is proof that the simplest activities are often the most fun. Give it a try and see who can come up with the most creative number sentence!

Open-Ended Maths Warm Up Slides

$13.00 AUD

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What if instead of groans and grumbles at the start of every maths lesson, you had a way to build genuine excitement and engagement?

Starting with the interactive spinning wheel to select your daily warm up, you'll get instant buy in from students.

Each warm up is then designed to be low floor, high ceiling, meaning they're accessible to all learners (low floor) while offering significant, complex challenges for advanced students (high ceiling). This allows you to engage and challenge ALL the students in your class.

With fully editable slides you can add, delete and change the questions to suit your class and the topics you're focusing on.