Hi
Here are some more activities that usually work well. I have just uploaded a website (
Welcome to our collection of warm-up activities for ESL and EFL classes), with a collection of tried and tested esl warm-up activities. I hope they're useful.
1. If I had a million dollars:
This gives students a chance to practice large numbers and the second conditional.
Write these sentences on the board and read them aloud:
- If I had 1000 dollars I would (buy a new computer.)
- If I had 100,000 dollars I would (buy a sports car.)
- If I had 1,000,000 dollars I would (buy a luxury apartment in Paris.)
Put the students into pairs and have them take turns, explaining what they would do with their money.
2. Tongue Twisters
Write a few tongue twisters on the board and chorus them until everyone understands how they should be performed. Give students a few minutes to practice with them, and then have a competition, giving points for speed and accuracy.
Tongue twister ideas:
- Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.
- Six thick thistle sticks. Six thick thistles stick.
- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
- We surely shall see the sun shine soon.
- She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
3. Correct the Questions
Write five simple warm-up questions on the board, each with one grammatical error. E.g.
- How was you weekend?
- Did you go to anywhere?
- What did you did?
- Who do you see?
- What are you are going to do next weekend?
Have students work in pairs to find and correct the mistakes. Elicit the errors and correct them on the board (or have students do this themselves) and then reassign pairs, having students ask and answer the corrected questions.