Warmers, fillers and re-energisers

Faces

Aim of the activity

To encourage the students to talk about their weekend.

Preparation

One sheet of paper with a smiley face on it and one piece of paper with an unhappy faceon it.

Procedure

Put the smiley face on the wall at one end of the classroom and the unhappy face at theother end of the classroom. Ask the students to stand up and arrange themselves in a line between the two facesaccording to how good or bad their weekend was.They will have to speak to one another to find out who had the best/worst time andnegotiate their place in the line.

Music circle

Aim of the activity

This is a good activity for getting the students moving if they have been sitting in theirseats for a while.

Preparation

You will need a tape with some lively music on it.

Procedure

Ask the students to form two circles of equal numbers, one inside the other.Tell them that they are going to move when you play the music - the inner circle shouldmove in a clockwise direction and the outer circle should move in an anticlockwisedirection.Start the music. After a while, stop the music and tell the students to face the person opposite them in theother circle - then call out an instruction.For example : Ask the person opposite you what time they got up this morning. Ask the person opposite you where they are going for their summer holidays

Ask the person opposite you who their favourite pop group/actor/author etcis Ask the person opposite you what they're doing tonight. Ask the person opposite you what they had for dinner last night.When the students have asked and answered one of the questions, play the music againfor a while and call out a different instruction when the music stops.Repeat the activity as often as you like.

Stand in line

Aim of the activity

To get the students up and moving.

Preparation

Depends on the line-up you decide to do.

Procedure

Ask the students to stand in line according to one of the following criteria :

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the first letter of their first name

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their date of birth

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the time they went to bed or got up this morning

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Hand out one picture card to each student and ask them to line up according to thefirst letter of the word it represents by saying their word out aloud.

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Hand out a clock face with a different time on it to each student in the class and ask them to line up in chronological order by saying the time on their clock out aloud.

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Divide the class into groups, mix up the letters of a word and give one letter to eachstudent in the group. Call out the complete word and ask them to get into thecorrect order to spell the word.

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- Mix up the words of a sentence and give one word to each student in the group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order to make a sentence by sayingtheir word out aloud.

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- Mix up the lines of a poem, a limerick or a song and give one line to each student inthe group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order of the poem or songby saying their line out aloud.

Frustration: speaking

Preparation and Procedure

Give everyone in the class lots of small pieces of paper and ask the students to write thename of someone famous on each piece. This person can be living or dead, real or afictional character. However, the name should be someone that is familiar to the wholeclass. Tell students to screw the papers up and to throw them into a box that youcirculate around the class. The class should sit in a circle and be divided into two teams.One student from Team A takes a paper from the box and tries to explain who the personis to their team without saying the name. For example, if the name were Elvis:Student “He was American………..a rock and roll singer …..the king of rock and roll” If nobody from Team A guesses, the student should replace the paper and take another.They only have 30 seconds before the turn goes to a student from Team B.

60 seconds: speaking

Divide the class into groups of three (a group of four if there is an extra student).Students in each group take it in turns to be the referee. The referee chooses a subjectwhich Student A must talk about for 60 seconds. Student B can challenge Student A if they think Student A has hesitated or gone off the subject. If the referee agrees, StudentB earns a point. It is then Student B’s turn to talk for 60 seconds. If the refereedisagrees, Student A gets a point and continues talking. This is very good practice for oralexams

How many words: vocabulary

A very popular word game. Write the following grid on the board: Ask students to call out nine different letters. Make sure they offer you a nice selection of vowels and consonants. Put them into the grid.M B A R E LS D UTell the students they have 5 minutes to find as many words as possible using the lettersin the grid. The word can only contain these letters and each letter can only be usedonce.They score as follows:3 letter word – 5 points4 letter word – 10 points5 letter word – 25 points6 letter word – 50 points7 letter word – 100 points8 letter word – 500 points9 letter word – 1,000 points

Telegrams: vocabulary

The class calls out 10 letters which are written up on the board. Teams then have tocreate a telegram using the 10 letters as the first letter of each word. For example: