Maths Warm-Up Activities for Australian Primary Schools

Maths Warm-Up Activities for Australian Primary Schools

A maths warm-up is a short, focused activity at the start of a maths lesson — typically five to fifteen minutes — designed to activate prior knowledge, build fluency, and get students thinking mathematically before the main lesson begins. In Australian classrooms, warm-ups are a staple of effective maths instruction, whether they take the form of a Number Talk, a mental maths challenge, a fluency drill, or a problem of the day.

The Australian Curriculum v9 for Mathematics emphasises fluency as a key proficiency strand — the ability to carry out mathematical procedures flexibly, accurately, and efficiently. Warm-ups are one of the most practical ways to build this fluency day by day, reinforcing number facts, mental computation strategies, and mathematical reasoning in short, regular bursts.

This page covers the research behind maths warm-ups, practical formats you can use tomorrow, curriculum-aligned strategies by year level, and ready-to-use resources created by Australian teachers.

Short, daily maths warm-ups build fluency more effectively than occasional longer practice sessions. Here's why.

The Research on Fluency and Retrieval Practice

AERO (Australian Education Research Organisation) highlights five strands of mathematical proficiency, drawn from the landmark NRC report Adding It Up (Kilpatrick et al., 2001): conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition. Warm-ups primarily target procedural fluency — but done well, they strengthen all five.

AERO's review of explicit instruction, covering more than 328 studies, found that explicit teaching is effective across a wide range of contexts and student groups. The research on spaced practice within that tradition highlights the importance of daily review for building fluency — revisiting skills regularly in short bursts rather than massing practice in a single session supports consolidation of new knowledge in long-term memory.

In practical terms, this means that five minutes of mental maths at the start of every lesson is more effective than a 30-minute fluency session once a week.

What Makes an Effective Warm-Up

Effective maths warm-ups share several characteristics:

• Short — five to fifteen minutes, no longer. The warm-up should energise students, not exhaust the lesson time.
• Focused — target one or two specific skills or strategies. Don't try to cover everything in one warm-up.
• Regular — daily practice builds fluency. The power is in the routine, not any single session.
• Interactive — students should be actively thinking, not passively watching. Use mini-whiteboards, turn-and-talk, or hands-up strategies to keep everyone engaged.
• Low-stakes — warm-ups are practice, not assessment. Students should feel safe to make mistakes and try strategies.

There are many ways to run a maths warm-up. Here are the most popular formats used in Australian primary classrooms.

Number Talks

Number Talks are short classroom conversations — typically five to fifteen minutes — around purposefully crafted computation problems that students solve mentally. Widely adopted in Australian primary schools, Number Talks are recommended by AERO as part of effective mathematics instruction and align with the Australian Curriculum's emphasis on developing flexible mental computation strategies.

How it works:

1. The teacher presents a problem on the board (e.g. 27 + 18).
2. Students solve it mentally — no pencils, no paper, no calculators.
3. When ready, students signal with a thumbs-up against their chest (not a hand in the air — this gives everyone thinking time).
4. The teacher invites several students to share their strategies, recording each method on the board.
5. The class discusses which strategies are most efficient.

The purpose is not to get the right answer quickly — it's to build a repertoire of mental strategies and develop mathematical reasoning. A single Number Talk problem might surface four or five different strategies from students.

Daily Review Slides

Many Australian teachers use a PowerPoint or Google Slides warm-up that cycles through a set of quick questions each day. A typical daily review slide might include:

• A mental computation problem
• A "What's the time?" clock
• A pattern or sequence to continue
• A word problem
• A quick data or measurement question

Daily review slides are easy to prepare once and reuse across the week, with the content changing to match the current unit or spiralling back to earlier topics.

Fluency Drills

Fluency drills focus on rapid recall of number facts. Common formats include:

• Beat the clock — students answer as many facts as they can in 1–2 minutes
• Around the world — two students compete head-to-head on a fact, the winner moves on
• Bingo — students have a grid of answers and mark off the result of each problem called
• Fact family triangles — students practise related addition/subtraction or multiplication/division facts

Problem of the Day

A single rich problem displayed on the board for students to work on as they settle in. The problem should be accessible at multiple levels — students who solve it quickly can extend their thinking ("Can you find a different way?" "What if the numbers were different?").

Number of the Day

Students explore a given number in as many ways as they can. For example, if the number of the day is 36:

• 36 = 30 + 6
• 36 = 4 x 9
• 36 is an even number
• 36 is a square number (6 x 6)
• Half of 36 is 18

This format works across year levels — Foundation students might explore the number 5, while Year 6 students explore 2.75 or 3/4.

The Australian Curriculum v9 sets clear expectations for the mental computation strategies students should develop at each year level. Use these as a guide for what to focus on in your warm-ups.

Foundation

• Counting forwards and backwards
• Subitising (instantly recognising small quantities without counting)
• Part-part-whole understanding of numbers to 10
• Matching numerals to quantities

Warm-up focus: counting songs, subitising flash cards, "how many?" collections, ten-frame activities. See our number sense activities for more Foundation ideas.

Year 1

• Counting on and counting back from any starting number
• Doubles (e.g. 4 + 4 = 8)
• Near doubles (e.g. 4 + 5 = double 4 + 1)
• Bridging to ten (e.g. 8 + 5 = 8 + 2 + 3 = 13)
• Addition and subtraction facts within 20

Warm-up focus: doubles songs, ten-frame addition, "make 10" games, counting on from a given number. See our addition and subtraction activities for resources.

Year 2

• Consolidation of Year 1 strategies with larger numbers
• Doubling and halving applied to multiplication (e.g. twos facts)
• Mental strategies for addition and subtraction: doubles, near doubles, bridging tens, partitioning
• Skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s

Warm-up focus: skip counting patterns, mental addition practice, "what's the double?" challenges, partitioning two-digit numbers.

Year 3

• Recall of multiplication facts for twos, threes, fours, fives, and tens
• Using known facts to derive unknown facts (e.g. 3 x 6 = 3 x 5 + 3)
• Mental strategies for single-digit multiplication and division

Warm-up focus: times tables practice (see our times tables chart), related division facts, "think multiplication to divide" problems.

Year 4

• Recall and proficiency with multiplication facts up to 10 x 10 and related division facts
• Extending facts to mentally compute with larger numbers (e.g. if 4 x 7 = 28, then 4 x 70 = 280)
• Mental strategies for addition and subtraction of two- and three-digit numbers

Warm-up focus: times tables fluency, extending facts to tens and hundreds, mental addition/subtraction of multi-digit numbers, place value understanding.

Year 5

• Using factors to simplify calculations (e.g. 15 x 16 = 5 x 3 x 4 x 4)
• Mental division using known multiplication facts
• Estimation strategies for checking reasonableness
• Working with fractions and decimals mentally

Warm-up focus: factor pairs, estimation challenges, "is the answer reasonable?" discussions, mental fraction/decimal conversions.

Year 6

• Selecting from a range of mental, written, and digital strategies for all four operations
• Fluency across all operations with whole numbers, fractions, and decimals
• Using number properties (commutativity, associativity, distributivity) to simplify calculations

Warm-up focus: multi-step mental challenges, order of operations practice, fraction and decimal computation, real-world estimation problems. For a broader view of primary maths resources, visit our dedicated page.

A consistent warm-up routine takes a few weeks to establish but pays dividends for the rest of the year. Here's how to get started.

Weekly Structure

Many teachers follow a predictable weekly pattern so students know what to expect:

• Monday — Number Talk (strategy discussion)
• Tuesday — Fluency drill (times tables, number facts)
• Wednesday — Problem of the day (rich problem-solving)
• Thursday — Daily review slides (mixed skills)
• Friday — Number of the day or maths game

You can adapt this to your timetable — the key is consistency. Students should walk in knowing how maths starts every day.

Managing the Routine

• Use mini-whiteboards for whole-class responses. Every student writes their answer and holds it up on your signal. This gives you instant formative data and keeps everyone accountable.
• Time it — set a visible timer for the warm-up so students (and you) know when it's time to transition to the main lesson. Five to ten minutes is ideal.
• Don't over-teach during the warm-up. If a concept needs significant instruction, save it for the main lesson. The warm-up is for practice and activation, not new teaching.
• Celebrate strategies, not just speed. In Number Talks especially, praise students who share efficient or creative strategies, not just those who answer first.

Differentiating Warm-Ups

You can differentiate warm-ups without creating separate activities:

• Use open-ended problems — "What two numbers multiply to make 24?" has many answers at different levels of complexity.
• Adjust number ranges — when doing a fluency drill, some students work with numbers to 20 while others work to 100 or 1,000.
• Provide scaffolds — a number line or hundred chart on the desk for students who need it, while others work mentally.

For more differentiation approaches, see our differentiation strategies page.