ESL warm-up activities

 

ESL warm-up activities are essential in the English classroom. Students may be tired or have other things on their minds and diving straight into a textbook or grammar explanation can be quite jarring. With a good warmer you can put your students into English mode; attentive,  interested and ready to participate. A warmer can also serve to review language from a previous lesson or prime the class for a new topic.

Make the longest words

Write a topical target word vertically down the board, for example, WINTER. In twos or threes, students attempt to come up with the longest word that begins with each letter. Give teams a point per word and a bonus point for the longest.    Waterfall    Industrious    Nausea    Terrified    Empty    Retailer

What does your name mean?

Using a dictionary, google or any other resource, students find and write down an appropriate adjective that begins with each letter of their first name. For example: Flirtatious, Relaxed, Extrovert, Desirable

Mixed-up question

It’s always good to start the class with a question. Write a good one on the board but mix up the word order, then challenge students to reconstruct the question and then discuss it in pairs or small groups. For example: most item you have the ever expensive what’s bought?

What’s the missing word?

Find a group of compound words or collocations which share a common word. For example, bedroom, bathroom, living room, classroom, showroom, etc. Give students one of the word/collocation parts, such as bed and have them guess the missing part, add to the list writing bath, living, class, etc., until they successfully guess the word. Here are some more examples:

ear, boxing, diamond, finger, wedding  (ring)

tea, soup, table, dessert (spoon)

kitchen, tea, bath, beach (towel)

green, light, ware, boat, work, wife (house)

How many sounds can you hear?

Students sit in silence for two minutes and write down every sound that they hear. Let them compare their lists with their neighbours before seeing who has the longest list? If you like this activity try doing a guess the sound quiz.

Odd one out

Give the students a couple of examples to guess, then get students to come up with their own ideas. Here are some examples: apple, peach, banana, tomato – a banana doesn’t have seeds strawberry, branch, bowling ball, boat, iceberg – bowling balls don’t float window, river, envelope, client, oregano – client doesn’t begin and end with the same letter comb, champagne, knife, plum – the word plum doesn’t contain any silent letters Note:  There can be more than one correct answer.

Name ten

Have students think of 10 items that fit particular criteria. For example:

Jobs where you have to wear a uniform

English football clubs

Sports that are played with a ball

Foods that contain egg

Animals that lay eggs

Three letter parts of the body – eye, arm, leg, hip, ear, toe jaw, rib, lip, gum