Resource centre - Ideas and techniques - Warmers
Involving students from the first minute of a class can be a challenge. Here, Nadia Zehni shares three of her favourite classroom warmers.
I always find the first ten minutes of a lesson the most difficult - it’s vital
to capture students’ interest and involve them from the start. An effective
warmer could make the difference between an alert and participating class, and a
group of zombies who decide to catch up on the sleep they missed out on from
partying the night before... (This comes from my experience of teaching
teenagers on the holiday island of Malta!)
1. True / False
For a first lesson with a new group of students I usually use the True or False
warmer. First I make sure the class know the difference between true and false,
and can give me some examples of true and false statements. I then ask the class
to write three interesting sentences about themselves on a new sheet of paper.
Two sentences must be true and one must be false.
When they have finished writing their sentences, I ask the class to stand up and
move the desks out the way so that they can mingle. Each student must find a
partner, greet them and introduces themselves, say what country they are from,
and listen to their partner’s three sentences. They must then guess which is the
false statement. Once both students have attempted a guess, they move on to
another person in the class and repeat this process.
This works really well to break the ice in a group of students that don’t know
each other. It gives them an opportunity to introduce themselves, say what
country they are from, and share some interesting information about themselves.
I always participate in this warmer so that the students feel that they know
something about the teacher too. You can follow this activity by discussing
which sentences were the most original and which was the most interesting topic
that was brought up.
2. Guess the Famous Person
The following warm up works well to lead into a topic on celebrity or fame and
fortune. This exercise will require pictures of famous and recognisable
celebrities (one for each student). Make the students stand in a line with their
backs to you and stick a picture on their backs with some sticky tape. The aim
of this warmer is to ask people questions about their celebrity and help others
find out about theirs. The students will need to keep circling round, looking at
the pictures on each others backs and helping out until everyone has found out
who their mystery celebrity is. This works as particularly good practice for
forming yes / no questions, or as a follow on from a lesson learning how to
describe people.
3. Where in the world
This warmer works really well with an international group of students as they
will be able to contribute more varied information and will spark discussion
amongst themselves. Before students arrive I place a piece of paper with a name
of a continent on each table. When the students arrive I let them deliberate and
wonder about the continent. I then put the following headings up on the board:
food, clothes, famous people, drink, animals (and any others you may want to
add) I give them some time to brainstorm items to put under each heading for
their continent. This leads into some good discussion about differences between
countries, and stereotypes about countries within them.
These warmers should get the students to participate and lead in nicely from a
previous lesson or into the coming one. If they are successful it will set the
tone for the lesson and keep the students' interest more effectively.
Activities with little preparation
Downloadable classroom activities
ESL resources
Grammar teaching ideas
What do you think of this article? Add a comment »
These warm-ups are really
great, because they are communicative. Also, they can be easily modified
according to a group one's teaches. I've already used true/false and guess the
famous person. I call the latter Find a Celebrity!
Nice activities. I agree
with the author about the difficulties teachers usually have when starting a
topic. I like these warmers ideas and I think I will put some into practise.
These days in which the course is nearly finished, pupils need to make double
effort to concentrate. I think these kind of activities can be helpful to grasp
their attention.
Greetings, I thank Nadia
for her suggested activities. They are really exhilarating and fantastic.
Teachers should always adapt themselves to motivate students and exholt them but
what about the time allocated for the steps of the class. Should they be
repeated activities every class? Thanks a lot. Hamed Hammad.
I think that this article
is excellent. I can use these ideas in my class and also make some activities.
Thank you. Warmers are very important as we have to involve them from the
start.
It's a great idea to use
those warmers not only with children but also with adolescents. I specifically
liked "Where in the world" it makes students think and give personal opinions.
You discover interesting things about their thoughts!!
Great advice for someone
who is just starting on the path to becoming a tefl teacher. I'm off next month
to Greece for a year and need all the advice and info I can get.
I really need warmers as I
am a new teacher. It can be really difficult to attract the attention of an
adolescent group especially when they are not interested in English.
Nice one... here's one I
regularly use. It's called the line quiz.
Split your class into two groups, get them to form two straight lines in front
of you. Explain it's a competition. You then ask the first two students a
question (based on whatever you want to review or to see if they studied or not)
example: "what colour is my jumper?" The first of the two saying "your jumper is
red" (or whatever colour it is) gets to go sit down. Once a line has no more
student, it means they have won! It wakes them up and helps to make a quick
revision... Hope you like it!
I have been teaching
English for 19 years and I have always used warmers in my classes. They can help
you set the scenario for the students. The book Five-minutes Activities
(above) has been very useful and helpful to me. My students enjoy the class more
and so do I.
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