Star of my life

This activity is great for breaking the ice and allowing teachers and students to get to know each other quickly.

Draw a four, six or eight-points star on the board or prepare an OHP, depending on how much you
want your students to know about you.
On each point of the star write something that is important for you, such as a date, name, number,
likes/dislikes, etc. For example, I usually write Dave (my husband's name), 31 (my age), 2+1 (I have two
brothers and one sister), Thailand (my dream holiday) and so on.
Write these words down but don't tell the students why they're there. The students have to ask you
questions and try to guess the meaning of what you've written. You can give points for those who guess
correctly or set a time limit to make it more interesting.
When you have finished, put your students into pairs and ask them to do the same.

Greetings

Choose a song that you like and that the students might also appreciate. It works better with lively,
happy tunes such as reggae.
In class make sure that you have lots of space for the students to walk around.
Explain that you'll play some music and when you stop they have to greet the person next to them by
shaking their hands and introducing themselves (name, country, nationality, age, likes and dislikes, etc).
Do it a few times adding new 'topics'; then add some variation and fun by asking them to greet each
other in a different mood, for example 'greet each other happily' or 'sadly' or 'you don't like the person you're
greeting' or 'he/she is your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend', 'you're in a bad mood', etc.
You can make it more complicated by changing the topics without warning or by asking the students to say the
next word using the last letter of the last word said.

Children: The magic element

By Patricia de Abreu

Level: Starter/beginner, Elementary Type: Extra

The aim of this activity is to work on: verb to be + name, size, color,
age; has got, hasn't got, abilities, likes and dislikes.
Procedure
1.

Ask your students to think of a magic element they would like to have.

2.

3.
4.

5.

Ask one of them to start drawing it on the board but not complete, just part of it. His/her friends will
have to guess what the element is by asking yes, no questions. E.g.: Is it a flower? Is it a moon? The one who
is drawing will answer: No, it isn't....
While his / her friends are asking questions he / she will continue drawing. The one who guesses will
be the next to draw his/her magic element.
Before having a new element, the one who drew his/ her magic element will have to talk about it,
telling his name, size, color, age, what it can or can't do, likes and dislikes. And he/ she will draw the abilities,
likes, dislikes etc. surrounding the magic element. For example: My magic element is a kite. Katy, the kite, It's
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 hot dogs.
Ask them to draw their magic elements in their notebooks for their next class.

Children: Let's buy a robot!

By Patricia de Abreu

Level: Starter/beginner, Elementary Type: Extra

A short activitiy to review greetings, introductions, spelling, age, place

of origin, imperatives, ability.
Robots have always been a source of inspiration and they have been used to teach orders and express
abilities and non-abilities many times. Here we have an integrated activity.
Procedure
1.
2.
3.
4.

5.
6.

Ask students to pretend to be robots. Tell them that they will have to imagine they are standing inside
the window area of a shop.
Choose one student to play the role of shop assistant and another one to play the role of customer.
Tell each of them what they are supposed to do.
For example: The customer wants to buy a robot that can do different things at home such as: clean
the house, open the window, close the door, sing, dance, play the guitar, sweep, cook, make the beds, iron,
answer the phone, etc.
The shop assistant will call each robot and give them instructions.
Each robot will have to greet the customer, introduce himself, spell his name, talk about his age, place
of origin and when he is given an instruction he will have to perform the activity and say what he can or can't
do.
Sample dialogue
Shop assistant: Good morning, Can I help you?
Customer: Yes, please. I'd like to buy a robot.
Shop assistant: OK. Robot 1. Come here, please. Talk!
Robot: Hello, My name is Roberto. R-o-b-e-r-t-o. I'm six years old. I'm from Argentina.
Customer: Can he sweep?

Shop assistant: Roberto: sweep, please.

Robot: I can sweep. I can sweep very well.
Shop assistant: Can he cook?
Shop assistant: Roberto: Please, cook, cook quickly.
Robot: I can cook quickly. (Encourage kids to speak like robots. They love doing that and they it enjoy it a lot!).
7.
Then, the activity goes on with the rest of the robots. Finally, the customer chooses one robot and buys
it. So they will be practising different functions such as: How much is it? Here you are, thank you, You are
welcome.
8.
For homework you can ask students to draw a robot and all the activities he can or can't do. In the
following class they will be talking about their robots. In this way, they will be working on third person singular
but consolidating the same vocabulary and structures they had already worked on their previous class.
9.
This activity can be adapted in order to recycle:
1.
Likes and dislikes, imperatives (orders)
The shop assistant giving an order and the robot expressing likes and dislikes:
Shop assistant: Clean the house, please.
Robot: I don't like cleaning houses. I like sleeping.
2.
Present continuous (actions now)
The owner of the robot is checking what the robot is doing. For example:
Owner: Where are you? Are you cleaning the windows?
Robot: No, I'm not. I'm cleaning the doors.
In this case you could give both the owner and the robot flashcards showing the activity.

Children: The line up

By Carla Cardosa

Level: Starter/beginner, Elementary Type: Extra

A fun, energetic warmer to review 'What's your name?', or similar

questions with very young children.
Procedure

Line the children up against a wall and then get them to ask the question 'What's your name?' all
together as a chant.
The teacher stands on the opposite end of the room, or the opposite wall and calls out the students'
names one by one.
As soon as the student in question is called, he/she tries to run to the opposite end of the room and
touch the wall without being caught by the teacher.
The teacher of course, plays along and lets them win.
The winner is now the person who must call out the next name. etc..
This game can be used for other questions as well like 'How old are you?', 'Where are you from?' 'Where do
you live?' enabling students to practise numbers, names of countries and places.

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

The Line Up Game

The Line Up Game is a really fun ice breaker game which works well in a school or group setting,
but also makes a super mixed-age party gathering - perfect for a large family party!

How to play:
Separate everyone into teams. 5 or 6 per team is the ideal number, and if you have mixed ages, mix
them up!
One person is the caller. He calls out "Everyone please now line up ..." and fills in the blank with a
statement such as the suggestions below. All the players race to find the right order and shout when
they are finished.
Ideas:

Everyone please now line up in order of age, oldest at the front, youngest at the back

Everyone please now line up in first name alphabet order

Everyone please now line up by height, shortest first

Everyone please now line up according to your birthdays - first in the year goes first

Everyone please now line up according to who served themselves dinner first

How many cousins have you got? Line up with the least cousins in front

What colour is your top? Line up in alphabetical order with the earliest letter first

Most hair at the back, least hair at the front

etc

Variations:
Make the odd round - or the whole game - a silent one! Players can only communicate with
gestures!

Mixed up sentence (anagram variation)

Write a sentence on the board but this time scramble the letters of each word. For example:
hwy ddint I dusty draher ta vieyunrsit?

What do you know about bananas?

Set a 5 minute time limit and in groups have students think up and write down as many facts
as they can about bananas (or cats, Belgium, David Beckham, etc.). One point should be
given for each true sentence.

A to Z race
Give students a theme, for example, jobs, things you take on holiday, food. Write the letters
A to Z on the board. Students write an appropriate word beginning with each letter.

Name ten

Have students think of 10 items that fit a certain 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

Lip reading
Bring a student to the front but command them to remain absolutely silent at all times
during the game. Reveal a flashcard/sentence on paper to them. They must try to silently
say it to the rest of the class- who are trying to guess what it is.

Warm-Up of the Week:

Murder Winks
This one is really fun
1. One person waits outside the classroom.
2. The remaining students form a circle and close their eyes.
3. The teacher selects one student to be the murderer by squeezing them on
the shoulder.
4. Everyone opens their eyes and the person waiting outside is let into the
room and circle.
5. The person in the centre of the circle has three chances to guess who the
murderer might be.

6. The murderers job is to wink at different people around the circle. As each
person gets winked at they must die an active, dramatic death.
You might also like to try having the entire class guess who the murderer is
rather than one particular student.

Secret Code

Level: Any Level

I sometimes give instructions to my students written in code that they have to interpret
before completing tasks. I've used this at various levels:
Here's an example: to revise alphabet and simple present verbs/vocab.
Tell students the code e.g. each code letter represents the
letter that comes before it in the alphabet a is b, m is n, 'dbu' is
cat etc.
Then they decode their message and do the task:
o xbml up uif cpbse - walk to the board
o kvnq ufo ujnft - jump ten times
To make it more difficult, I've ...
used more complex codes,
let them work the code out for themselves,
have not defined where words end,
have given more complicated tasks or vocabulary
or given them half an instruction which they must decode and
then find the classmate with the other half of their task
information.

Crazy Story

Level: Any Level

This is an activity that will make your students speak in class and be creative.
Ask students to write a word on a piece of paper and tell them
not to show anyone. This word should be a verb (or whatever
you'd like to review).
The teacher starts telling a story, then stops and chooses a
student.
That student will continue the story and must use his/her word.
This student then chooses the next student to continue the
story.
The last student must end the story.
After the story is over, the students then try to guess what
words each student has written on his/her paper. The student
who guesses the most words wins the game.

This is an easy warm-up involving no equipment. Say the name of a Mr. Man and children have to
move like him. The ones I use are:

Mr. Slow - move slowly.

Mr. Rush - move fast.

Mr. Jelly - shake your whole body.

Mr. Muddle - walk backwards.

Mr. Bounce - bounce!

Mr. Small - crouch and move.

Mr. Strong - move flexing your muscles.

Mr. Tall - stretch up and move (good for stretching once the children's hearts are racing.)

Sammy Rosehill has also suggested these ideas:

Mr. Tickle - wave around your arms in a crazy way.

Mr. Happy - move around with big smiles on your face.

Shoot for Points

We often need to review things that are no fun, things like
the past simple or past participle of irregular verbs. Instead
of the classic Q & A, try this. Use a large container or trash can
as your basket, give your students a ball and have them
shoot for points. But heres the catch: youll ask them a
question in past simple, and theyll have to remember the past
correctly in order to earn the chance to shoot. They can get 10
points for scoring or five if they miss (because at least they
answered the question correctly). You can try any variety of this
type of game, whether you use large balls or small ones, or
even a wadded up piece of paper.

Tic Tac Toe

Tic Tac Toe is another versatile game, one that can be
adapted to suit a wide variety of needs. What you need to
decide first is which grammar your students need to review for
the test. Then, write the topics on nine index cards or large
enough pieces of paper. Arrange the cards face down on a
table or stick them on the board, in the classic Tic Tac Toe 3 x 3
grid.
Next, teams take turns choosing a square (you can add letters
across and numbers down to make it easier to call out the
squares). You turn over the card and reveal to your students
the tense/structure/grammar point written on it. Students must
then either provide an example or ask a question that another
team member must answer correctly to get their X or O on that
square. Of course, the first team that gets three Xs or Os
across, down or diagonally wins.

Football!
This is a game Ive played with students of different ages
and levels with tremendous success. First, youll need to
draw a playing field like this one on the board or a large piece
of paper:

Next, divide your students into two teams. Place a ball token
at the center. Then, students must answer questions correctly
to approach the posts and score a goal. For example, Team A
answers correctly and moves right one step closer to their goal.
Team B answers correctly and moves the ball left back to the
center. Team A answers incorrectly and cant move the ball at
all. Team B answers correctly and moves left one step closer to
their goal. If Team A were to keep answering incorrectly and
Team B correctly, then Team B will continue moving left to
eventually score a goal. When a team scores, the ball moves
back to the center, and the team that did not score last starts.
The team with the most goals wins.
Jeopardy
Based on the classic TV game show, this game will require
your students to put on their thinking caps. Divide your
whiteboard into columns for vocabulary categories and rows
with different point values. Like this:

Divide your students into two teams. Each team chooses a

category and the points they want to play for: We choose
Countries for 25 points.Supply a clue or definition: This country
is south of the US, and they eat tacos there. They must guess
the right country in the form of a question: What is Mexico? If
they answer correctly you erase the points from the chart and
add them to the teams tally until theyre all wiped off. Adapt this
game to any level of difficulty and include as many categories
as you wish.
Earthquake
Draw a 5 by 5 grid on the whiteboard and label each column
from A to E and each row 1 to 5. Each team chooses a square,
say A5; you ask a question you have previously prepared.
Before starting the game choose three squares that wont have
any questions, and when a team chooses one of these, tell
them an earthquake has just swallowed up some of their
pointsdeduct 5 points.
I dont know
Students try to ask Present Simple questions that the person answering doesnt know the
answer to, to get the answer I dont know. These can be general questions like How often do
people in this city take a bus? and Does President Obama like cheese?, but the game works
best if the questioners have to think of more personal questions that the person answering

doesnt know the answer to. For example, you can limit the questions to ones about the person
answering, their classmates and/ or their family like How many books do you have?, How
many cups of coffee does your dad drink every day?, What colour bicycle does your
grandmother have? and Does Jorge live near here?

Adverbs of frequency ladder game

Draw a ladder on the board with a frequency expression on each rung in order of frequency, e.g.
never, almost never etc. or once every two years, once a year etc. To climb to the top of
the ladder, students must ask questions to get those answers in exactly the order given. If they
get a different answer they fall to the bottom of the ladder and have to start again. However,
they can ask the same questions when they try again if they can remember them. To make the
game slightly easier, you can have the rule that if a student gets the answer of the rung that they
are already on, it means that they dont fall down but just cant go up to the next rung yet.
Students can then draw their own ladders in their notebooks and play the same game in groups.
9. Present Simple bluff
One student makes a true or false statement about their routines or those of people they know
such as family members and people in their neighbourhood. Perhaps after answering questions
like How often? and Why do/ does?, the other people guess if the statement was true or
not. They can continue to lie (hopefully convincingly) during the questioning stage.
Present Simple Q&A bluff below is a variation on this game.
10. Present Simple Q&A bluff
Students reply to Present Simple questions with a mix of true and untrue answers, perhaps in a
proportion decided by the teacher such as three true answers and two false ones. After asking
for more details if they like (during which time the person should continue telling the truth or
lying depending on which answer they are being asked about), the other students in their group
try to guess which answers werent true.
This is a variation on Present Simple Bluff above.
2. On in at brainstorming races
Students brainstorm as many expressions as they can onto the board or a piece of paper
divided into three columns with on, in and at at the top of them, trying to write lots of
examples that no other groups will think of such as at seven minutes past seven in the
morning. When time is up, they get one point for each expression which is in the right place
and no other group wrote down.

To play the game on the whiteboard or blackboard rather than on paper, put the students in front
of the board in three lines, with each line being one team as well as one of those three columns.
The person at the front of each line writes just one expression, then passes the pen to the next
person in the line and goes to the back. The person at the front can ask for ideas from other
people behind them in their group, but cant pass the pen until theyve written something.

Give students a list of Present Continuous sentences that they can

mime to their partners for them to guess, e.g. You are eating bread
and jam. You can add the Present Simple to this by choosing
actions that some people do every day (e.g. You are eating spicy
food and You are blowing your nose) and asking them to go on to
discuss how often they do those things and why. This is more
interesting if it is a topic that is linked to cultural differences, e.g.
table manners.

Vocabulary: Pass the parcel

By Clare Tyrer

Level: Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced Type: Extra

This is a good revision activity and helps to foster a lively group

atmosphere.
One of my favourite warmers is 'pass the parcel' with vocabulary - a variation on defining words. This is a good
revision activity and helps to foster a lively group atmosphere.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Write down a selection of words the students have learned during the term on pieces of card and put
them in a bag.
Ask the students to sit in a circle. Stand outside the circle and control the tape recorder / CD player.
Play the tape / CD. As music plays, ask the students to pass around the vocabulary bag.
Stop the tape / CD at intervals during the song.
When the music stops playing, the student who has the bag has to select a word from the bag and
define the word to the other students.
The student who guesses the word keeps the card and the game continues.
The person who has the most cards at the end wins! If the student doesn't know how to define the word, it can
be replaced with another or put back in the bag. Obviously the latter isn't a good idea when there are only a few
words left!

Vocabulary: Pyramid game

By Ekaterina Pope

Level: Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced Type: Extra

This warmer is adapted from a Russian TV game show called

Pyramid', and is a very effective way of revising vocabulary.
Here's an idea for a warmer I've adapted from a Russian TV game show called Pyramid', and although it's a
simple idea it's a very effective way of revising vocabulary.
Procedure

All you need for it is some paper, a pen and a stopwatch (or the second hand of a watch).
Divide the class into teams of two contestants. The object of the game is for these contestants to
describe seven words from a vocabulary category to their partner within a time-limit. The category could be
anything; for example, for my latest game of Pyramid I chose, amongst others, the following: things you can
make, the cinema, in a woman's bag and things that can be broken.
Players take it in turns to choose a category, and the teacher gives the player the seven words which
he must describe to his partner in English. He is given thirty seconds to do this, and gets a point for each word
his partner guesses within this time limit. Depending on the size of the group, give each player a couple of turns
at describing words, then add the scores of the pairs to find out which is the winner.
The rules are fairly simple: no root words (e.g. if the word is headache, no using the word head) and
descriptions only in English. The game also tends to work better without excessive use of gesture!
This is a warmer pretty suitable to any level; with lower levels categories like cinema can be used to
check simple vocabulary (popcorn, seat, ticket etc.), but with higher levels you can use the game to look at
collocations. For example, in the category things that can be broken I've chosen washing machine, heart, rule,
lift, habit, stereotype and record; similarly, there are many diverse things which you can make in English!