Here you can find some interesting and motivating warming up activities to start your classes. Enjoy them!

1. Warming Up activities
By Nicole Arce König

2. Level: 4th grade
Unit: “Parts of the house”
Activity name: Use the dictionary
Procedure: Give a set of six or ten English words the students probably do
not yet. They find out the meanings of as many as they can from the
dictionary within a given time: three minutes, for example.
Check the meanings.
This activity can be used to prepare the vocanulary they are going to meet
in their next reading passage.

3. Level: 5th grade
Unit: “I’m hungry”
Activity name: Categories
Procedure: Ask the students two columns on paper and give them a
category heading for each. For example: fruits and vegetables. Then
dictate a series of words wich can fit into one of the categories. Finally,
check the results.
Fruits Vegetables
Apple Cabbage
Strawberry Lettuce
Watermelon Carrots
Pineapple Onions
Grapes Cucumber

4. Level: 6th grade
Unit: “Food tongue twisters”
Activity name: Tongue twisters
Procedure: Write a tongue twister on the board, and read it with the students
slowly at first, then faster. Make sure the students’ pronounciation is
acceptable. Then individual volunteers try to say it quickly three times. For
example:
“A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook
cookies”
“Fresh fried fish, fish fresh fried, fried fish fresh, fish fried fresh”
“Give papa a proper coffee in a copper coffee cup”

5. Another famous and complex tongue twister:
Betty Botter bought some butter
But she said this butter's bitter
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter,
But a bit of better butter
Will surely make my batter better.
So she bought a bit of butter
Better than her bitter butter
And she put it in her batter
And her batter was not bitter.
So t'was better Betty Botter
Bought a bit of better butter.

6. Level: 7th grade
Unit: “My favorite sport”
Activity name: Draw a word
Procedure: Whisper to one student, or write down on a slop of paper, a
word or phrase that the class has recently learnt. The student draws a
representation of it on the board: this can be a drawing, a symbol, or a hint
clarified through mine. The rest of the class has to guess the item. For
example: student has to start with the phrase, “ My favorite sports is…”
and then draw the clue.
“ My favorite sports is…”
Cycling Running Surfing

7. Level: 1th secondary grade
Unit: “My dream job”
Activity name: Erasing words
Procedure: Write on the board about ten words wich are difficult to spell, and
give the class a minute to ‘photograph’ them. Point to onde word, then erase
it; the students writes it down from memory. And so on, until all the words
have been erased. Check the spellings.
For example: Accountant, archeologists, chemist, designer, engineering,
nutritionist and psychologist.

8. Level: 2nd secondary grade
Unit: “Learning about technologies”
Activity name: Guessing
Procedure: Chose a tech and tell the students some features about it.
They have to guess what it is. Encourge ‘narrowing-down’ questions, and
give genrous hits if the guessing slows down or seems not to be
progressing towards the righ answer. The students who guesses the
answer chooses the next thing to be described and guessed.

9. Level: 3rd secondary grade
Unit: “Health and moden life”
Activity name: Something interesting about myself
Procedure: A volunteer student tells the others something interesting about
his or her healthy way to live which he or she is willing to talk about.
For instance:
“I´m realy worried about my personal hygiene”
“I learnt that take a balanced diet is useful to avoid diseases”
“ My sister told me that take regular exercise, sleep well and rest can help
me to be healthy”
The others ask questions.
It is a good idea to satrt the ball rolling by being the first volunteer yourself;
or ask students who you know are more confident and uninhibited to be the
first.

10. Level: 4th secondary grade
Unit: “Dreams and desires ”
Activity name: What did they say?
Procedure: Teacher challenge students to tell the class what are their
dreams or desires. The students must pay attention and take notes about
their classmates said and they must report them in idirect speech.
For instance:
“Andrea said she wanted to be a prestigious dentist”
“Carlos said that he desire to have a big house with exotic pets”
See if they can remember 10, 12 or 15 things that were said and write
some of them on the board.