TEFL Lesson Planning - Warmers to Make Your Students Adore You - Part III By Adrian Allen
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In previous articles we have talked about why warmers are essential, the secret of what to include in them, and gave a working example as an illustration. Here we expand on the examples, and have no doubt you will be excited by the possibilities. Teaching English will never have been such fun or as effective!
Collapsing partners:
This is a blast - high energy stuff for teaching English!
- Put your students into pairs.
- Put the pairs facing each other and standing in a line.
- The student pairs should be so close their shoes are almost touching (total invasion of personal space - great for ice breaking!) and stand with their hands raised and resting their palms on each other's hands.
- The rule: you are not allowed to loose contact with your partner's hands.
- Now the teacher passes down the line asking students questions.
- If a pair answers correctly, then the T moves on to the next pair.
- If a pair answers incorrectly, they each have to move back a certain distance, opening up space between them, and being forced to prop each other up with their hands.
- I normally use the tiles on the floor as the squares where students must stand - but anything will do - a chair behind each student as a marker for example.
- The teacher starts with easy questions, but makes them progressively harder.
- Students move progressively backwards as they can't answer the questions, until they can't stand up!
- Students go to full stretch and end up in a pile on the floor. It's very funny.
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Teaching English: Notes:When pairing students up, it helps if they are of a similar height.Students tend to shift themselves closer after being moved apart - use a warning system - say 2 yellow cards and a red for offenders!For enhanced teacher-student contact, try setting pairs up together by taking their hands and putting them together in the starting positions.Odd numbers of students and large groups can be done too; they form circles and prop their hands up on their neighbours hands.
Lip reading:
This one puts students into contortions - really gets students straining at the leash to speak!
- Place your students in two rows facing each other, with as much distance between them as the class allows.
- Starting at one end, tell the first pair facing each other that they are partners. Walk down between the rows pairing up all the students facing each other. For odd numbers have two students paired to one student.
- All the students from one row now have to stand up and huddle round the teacher.
- Students are shown a sentence written on a piece of paper. This must not be seen by the other row of students.
- Now all the students return to their seats. When the teacher gives the word, they 'say' the sentence to their partners without actually making any sound.
- In response, their corresponding partners say out loud what they are lip reading, and the first pair to say the sentence correctly wins.
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Teaching English: Notes:
I usually play fairly loud music to avoid the students hearing any noise from their partners - it also gives an upbeat energy to the activity.It is good to place some kind of physical barrier to stop students moving closer. In their anxiousness to communicate, they crane closer, shift their chairs, and start to make their sentences audible. Be strict on the rules, and give a time out to pairs who break them!Get the 'speaking' students to sit on their hands. This avoids sign language!Put a time limit on a given sentence - the activity should be brisk.If two students say the correct sentence at the same time, decide who wins by asking them to repeat the sentence - the one with the best pronunciation wins.
Tower of bricks:
Students of all ages love this activity, and it leads to a fantastic crescendo of a finale!
- For this you will need materials: a set of 'Jenga' bricks. This is a game comprising blocks that are normally used to form a tower, with players taking turns to remove blocks without the tower falling down.
- Here it is done the other way round.
- Students answer questions to win blocks.
- When all the blocks are given out, they are used to build a tower - the highest one wins.
- Allow 60 seconds for this last step. Get ready for some high tension stuff!
Notes:
Don't allow students to build towers while you are asking questions, as this distracts them, but do give them the blocks as they win them, as this heightens their competitive appetite.Make sure there is sufficient distance between teams, otherwise they may accidentally (or intentionally!) knock over another another teams tower (causes pandemonium).This game is often not won by the team with most building blocks - they often try to build too high, and end up with nothing at the end of the count down.
If no one can answer a given question, put the brick to the side, and add one more to it. Restate the answer, and let it be understood that that answer will now win double the number of points. After a few more questions, hold up the two bricks and ask the question - the first to answer wins the kitty!
In the next teaching English article we will talk about how to adapt any warmer to any classroom situation.
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Adrian Allen is one of the co-founders of http://www.findateacher.es This is a bilingual search tool for private teachers to advertise themselves to students. It can be used either for free, or by paying a small subscription fee for better ranking in the database.
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