Have you ever wondered how cool an English lesson can be if you choose a good warm-up? First and foremost, we should understand the goal of the warm-up and why we need it during the class. Let’s try to analyze some of the aims of the warm-up:
To organize effective warm-up activities for teaching English, you should:
Speaking about the warm-up, let’s mention the different types of warm-up activities that can help the teacher introduce the topic of the lesson, such as:
The purpose of this warm-up is to work out the use of the verb “to be” with names, size, color, and age. The verbs “has got,” “hasn’t got,” “can,” and “like” are used as well.
One student goes to the blackboard and begins to draw a part of their magical thing, while the rest of the group asks leading questions, trying to guess what it is. Only yes/no questions are allowed, for example: – “Is it a flower?” “Is it a moon?”; – “No, it isn’t.”
Whoever guesses the thing becomes the next participant. The one who drew the picture should tell about their magical thing, for example: “My magical element is a kite. It is big. It’s blue and orange. It has got two eyes. It can fly. It can sing. It can dance. It can’t swim. It likes hamburgers but it doesn’t like hotdogs.”
For this warm-up, three participants are needed: one plays the robot, the other plays the buyer, and the third plays the seller. Each of them performs their own function. For example: a buyer wants to buy a robot to help in the house. The seller calls the robot and gives it instructions. The robot must greet the seller, introduce itself, spell its name, name its age, country, name, and show what it can or cannot do.
The purpose of this warm-up is to learn how to ask and answer questions correctly. This warm-up is suitable for reinforcing any grammatical structures. Questions can be prepared for students in advance, or they can be suggested to create questions themselves. Participants stand in a circle, but questions are asked not to the neighbor, but to the one who stands behind them. Anyone who gets confused or answers the wrong question is eliminated from the game.
The English alphabet is written on the board. Under it is a cat and the inscription “The Emperor’s cat is an…. cat.” Students are then asked to recall as many adjectives as possible. The warm-up is as follows: the first student says, “The Emperor’s cat is an awful cat.” The second continues, “The Emperor’s cat is an awful and beautiful cat.” The third says, “The Emperor’s cat is an awful, beautiful, and Chinese cat.” And so on, for all the letters of the alphabet.
The goal of the game is to show with facial expressions and gestures what is happening. Students sit in a circle. They are given the task to pass each other a certain object. For example, the teacher says, “You hold a hot potato,” and the students must quickly pass the potatoes while showing that they are hot. Then the game can continue with other objects such as a glass of water, ice, baby, etc.
Ten chairs are placed in a circle, and students sit on them. There is a facilitator who gives instructions in the center. For example, “Everyone with blond hair change your seat.” Everyone who is suitable for this instruction should change seats. After each instruction, one chair is removed. The goal of the game is to stay in the game as long as possible.
Students are divided into two teams. They sit on chairs in two lines, opposite each other. The teacher names the word to be spelled. The first member of the first team says the first letter, the first member of the second team continues, and so on, until someone makes a mistake. The one who makes a mistake leaves the team. The team, whose player is the last one left, wins.
Students are given any topic to discuss, but when discussing this topic, five different numbers must be said: date, price, phone numbers, time, sizes, etc.
The teacher names the word, and the students take turns adding words to make a grammatically correct sentence. The winner is the one who is the last to make a grammatically correct sentence.
Write cards with words such as jobs, hobbies, dreams, movies, food, etc. The student pulls out a card with the topic they should talk about within a minute.
The teacher reads the definition of the word in English, and the students must name the word.
This is the most common exercise for switching to English. To make it interesting for the student, link it to the main topic of the lesson or a topic that your student will be interested in discussing. And, of course, the warm-up must be appropriate for the level and age.
For example, Internet:
The teacher writes any word, and the student’s task is to continue with a word that begins with the last letter of the previous one. And so, they can continue in turn until the time runs out. You can make the game more challenging by writing down words of only one topic, or only with a certain number of letters, or one part of speech. The game is suitable for both children and adults.
The warm-up is an extremely useful tool for starting classes on an energetic note, as well as a great way to get the class thinking in English. It’s essential that your warm-ups get students to use the language as much as possible. All the techniques presented were tested and used in the lessons.