Warmers

WARMER: 1

First day warmer :

On the board write “During this course I hope to…” Students are given a couple of minutes alone to continue the sentence and write about their expectations. When they finish, they work in pairs to compare their answers. Finally feedback and common elements are written on the board. Once you know their expectations you’re more likely to fulfil them. This will also be useful when planning your lessons.

Warmer: 2

Chain Story: Revising past tenses: Begin telling a story. This can be the first few lines of a story from your course book, or improvised. Going round the class, each student has to add another brief ‘instalment’ to the story, e.g. “It was raining outside and I was watching TV. Suddenly I heard…”

Warmer 3

To revise, introduce articles, adjectives, nouns:

I packed my bag for alaska and in my bag I put

An apple and a book

An apple, a book, and a cup

An apple, a book, a cup and a doll

Suitable for beginner/elementary levels : go round the class using all the letters of the alphabet.

For higher levels get them to put an adjective of the same letter in front of the noun… it can get tricky! Beware of wrong collocations!

I packed my bag for alaska and in my bag I put

An amazing album

An amazing album and a beautiful beret

An amazing album, a beautiful beret and a chunky choker

Warmer 4

My neighbour’s cat

Start by drawing a cat on the board

Introduce it as your neighbour’s cat.

‘My neighbour’s cat is an awful cat’

Write the letters of the alphabet on the board.

Students take it in turns to find adjectives in alphabetical order.

my neighbour’s cat ia an admirable cat

my neighbour’s cat is a beautiful cat

my neighbour’s cat is a cautious cat

my neighbour’s cat is a dangerous cat……

This can be accompanied by clapping a beat.

This activity is useful after a writing exercise where the tempo needs to be changed. Besides its validity on its own merits, it can also be used to recycle vocabulary.

Warmer 5

Associations This is an activity useful for a review of vocabulary through imaginative association.

Start by suggesting an evocative word, for example STORM. A student says what the word suggests to him, eg DARK. The next student suggests an association with ‘dark’ and so on.

You could start with: sea, fire, tired, holiday, morning, English, family, home, angry…..’

If there’s time, after you have completed a chain of about 15-25 associations, take the final word suggested, write it on the board, and together with the class, try to reconstruct the entire chain back to the original idea.

Warmer 6

A fun activity to practise fruit and vegetable vocabulary.

 

Aims

To practise simple personal questions:

What’s your name?

How old are you?

Are you married?

How many children do you have?

What’s your job?

To revise basic vocabulary

To break the ice and make students relax and enjoy using English

To incorporate body language and intonation in the lesson

To get students moving around the classroom and changing the dynamics away from a teacher-led activity

Procedure

Ask students to write down the following words on a scrap of paper, keeping what they write secret form those around them.

Tell them to write:

1. the name of a fruit

2. the name of a vegetable

3. a number between 1 and 200

4. Ask them to write the answer to this question – Do you like football?

5. How many pencils and pens do you have?

6. What is the first thing you do every morning?

Now tell them that these things are actually:

1. their first name

2. their family name

3. their age

4. are they married?

5. how many children they have

6. their job

Now they must get up and go around the class and ask the personal questions and share information about their new selves.

Encourage them to shake hands (if appropriate) and make eye contact when meeting new people.

If they don’t automatically use intonation appropriate for surprise etc, why not model it before the activity. For example:

How old are you?

A hundred and fifty seven.

Really!? (said with rising intonation and a long stretch of the word)

This game ensures that students really listen to the answers of their questions as it is an information gap – they won’t know what the answers will be.

Warmer 7

Cut up story/conversation – put in order.