Методичні рекомендації "Warm-Ups: A Great Start to Any Lesson"

Warm-Ups: A Great Start to Any Lesson

Presenter: Bevzyuk Svitlana, English teacher, Haivoron Lyceum №2

Why are warm-ups important?

Warm-ups get your students' attention at the beginning of the lesson. Everyone is involved and so everyone is listening, speaking, writing, or reading in English. Your students have busy days with lots of lessons, when they come to your lesson you want them to be ready to work in English and not be working on or worrying about other things. There are three great reasons to use warm-ups:

1. To introduce a new topic
2. To review material
3. To get your students' attention and set the mood of the lesson

Here are some ideas for warm-ups you can do in your lessons that don't require a lot of preparation. Sometimes you can even ask your students to prepare the materials for you as part of the warm-up.

1. Twenty Questions

Preparation needed: none

Skills Practiced: Speaking, Listening

You think of a word and then tell your students that they must guess the word. They can ask you twenty questions but all of the questions must be yes or no questions. For example: Is it big? Is it in this room? Is it red? They need to work together and listen to the answers you give in order to guess the word correctly. You can make the word about the topic you are studying, introduce something new, or just think of something that would be funny for them to guess.

2. Pulled Out of My Hat

Preparation needed: Prepare a number of speaking topics on small slips of paper

Skills Practiced: Reading, Speaking

Write a number of topics on small pieces of paper and then put them in a hat/bag or simply hold them in your hand. Decide how long you want your students to speak Ask your students to pull out a slip of paper and then speak for the amount of time you have chosen (30 seconds or a minute work really well). They need to keep speaking continuously. If they have trouble thinking of what to say then you can help by asking questions. This is a great way to review material because you can choose topics they have already learned about and test their knowledge

3. Brainstorming

Preparation needed: none

Skills Practiced: Speaking, Reading, Listening, Writing

This activity is great for introducing a new topic. Give your students a question to answer. For example: What do you know about Great Britain? Put the question on the blackboard or on a piece of wallpaper Ask one student to come up to the board and be the "writer" Give the students about five minutes to come up with as many things as they can think of about the question or topic you have given. The main goal here is that the students work together to come up with as many ideas as they can They will think of more if they can bounce ideas off of each other.

4. Paragraph Scramble

Preparation needed. Write paragraphs on sheets of paper and then cut them up into sentences

Skill Practiced: Reading

Divide the class into groups and then give one paragraph to each group and ask them to arrange them into the correct order. You can give the same paragraph to everyone or a different one to each group. After they finish ask them to read their paragraphs out loud

5. Matching Vocabulary

Preparation needed. Write words and their matching definitions or Ukrainian equivalents on slips of paper and mix them up.

Skill Practiced: Reading

You can make this a group activity or work as a whole class. Ask the students to match the words with their definitions or translations. After they are finished you can ask them to read them out loud and stick them on the board with scotch. This is a good way to either review old vocabulary or introduce new vocabulary. If it is new you can then ask them to write the words in their copybooks

6. Acrostic Poem

Preparation Needed: None

Skills Practiced: Writing, Listening

Write a word or phrase on the board vertically. Ask you students to think of a word or phrase for each letter that describes that word. The word or phrase can be taken from the title of a topic in the book or a vocabulary word.

S eptember

C lasses

H omework

O rganization

O lympiads

L essons

7. Picture-Story Chain

Preparation Needed: Find five pictures that are not related to each other

Skills Practiced: Speaking, Listening

Put the five pictures on the blackboard where all of the students can see them Ask them to create a story that connects all of the pictures. It can be as crazy and funny as they want it to be. You can even ask them to write it down if you want to practice writing

8. Picture Elicitation

Preparation Needed: One picture (get one as big as you can)

Skills Practiced: Speaking, Listening, Writing

Put your large picture on the board or wall and then ask you students questions about it. Ask them to describe the people and things in the picture. A great idea is to let them write sentences about the picture as a creative writing exercise. Try to ask questions related to the topic the students are studying if possible.