What is it?

HERE students have to guess what is in the picture.

Modal verbs of Deduction

You a re a landlord or landlady and one of our tenants has not paid her rent this week. You have not heard her in her room and you are rather worried as she did not tell you she was going to be away. You decide to go into her room to see if you can get any clues. Here is a list of things you found in her room.

1. A student card.
2. A lot of books about economics.
3. Several empty packets of cigarettes and ashtray full of cigarette ends.
4. A packet of love letters tied up with pink ribbon.
5. A photograph of a smiling young man in a Mediterranean beach.
6. A “Teach Yourself” Greek book.
7. A half-packed suitcase.

First Conditional Warmer

Give one student a warning about some small, insignificant action, e.g. 'If you drop your pen it'll break'. Invite learners to continue by taking the second half of your warning and creating a new warning, e.g. 'If your pen breaks you won't be able to do your exam'. Once this sentence is established, elicit the next warning - becoming bigger and stranger as they go on: e.g. 'If you can't do your exam you'll have to leave school' etc. At the end, see if learners working in pairs can recall the whole chain of warnings - starting from that one small initial action. Pairs should then create their own chain starting from a new warning.

Because

Use this fun warmer to review 'because' and to practice listening skills.

Begin by telling the class something you did yesterday.

eg: I went to the market.

Choose a student and have them repeat what you said, add because, and give an explanation.

eg: I went to the market because I needed cilantro.

Then have that student choose a classmate, and have her repeat the process.

eg: I needed cilantro because I was making tacos. (S chooses a classmate to create a sentence using because) I was making tacos because it was my turn to cook.

Present Continuous Countries

First demonstrate it yourself: secretly choose a country (for example, France) and describe what (most/some/a few) people in that country are probably doing right now: 'Some people are drinking wine with cheese' etc. Provide additional sentences until someone guesses where it is. Then have students work in pairs and have them guess each other's secret country. You may also want to provide a map with time zones for this activity, or draw one on the board

Going to

Start by saying that all of us (the class) are friends with Paul (or any name you like), and that we are all going to bring him a gift/present. Explain that it´s a memory game and you have to remember what everyone is going to bring and continue until someone makes a mistake.
Example:
(First person) I´m going to Paul's party and I´m going to give him a t-shirt...
(second person) Í´m going to Paul´s party and I´m going to give him a t-shirt and a book...
So on and so on.
This can work for any level but especially basic. To make it harder you can make them adjectives and add rules such as all the nouns can only start with `s´.

Categories

*Divide the class in half.
*Mix up the alphabet cards.
*Write the category on the board. (See suggestions below)
*Show the students one card at a time.
*Students must shout out a word that begins with that letter in the category.
*Whoever you hear first with the correct answer, wins the card for their team.
*Whichever team has the most cards at the end, wins the round.

Some suggestions for Categories: *Animals *Fruit and Vegetables *Famous Dead People *Celebrities *Household Goods *Things in the Ocean *Gerunds *Past Tense Verbs *Things in the Grocery Store *Past Participles *Adjectives *Jobs *Things Found in Nature *Things in the Kitchen

Verbs TIC TAC TOE

The idea of the game is for groups to link together three squares to win as in normal tic-tac-toe. Groups gain a square by giving a correct sentence for their chosen word. In this way, you can target the game at any level you want for what ever target language you want.

Recipe Card Mix-Up

Give each student a recipe or index card. Choose about five questions that you might ask of students. Try to be as creative as possible with the questions. Possible questions might include the following:

What is the title of a favorite book?

What do you like doing in your free time?

What is your favorite game?

What is your favorite TV program?

If you could request your favorite meal for your birthday, what would that meal be?

Once students and the teacher have written their answers to the questions, collect the cards and shuffle them. Then pass out a card to each student being sure students do not receive their own cards. When everyone has a card each student has to find the student in the room who belongs to the card the student holds.

Word of the day

Start each day throughout the school year introducing a Word of the Day. Write the word on the board and ask students to read the word. Give a few clues for students to guess the meaning of the word. Then use the word in several statements.

60 Second Adventures

In this Youtube Channel you can find some sixty second videos you can use as a warmup.

Excuses warmer

Students should try to say as many different excuses as possible to explain why the person being called cannot speak to the person called.

Example: "He is having dinner" or "She is walking her dog", or "They are flying to Madrid in 5 minutes".

Complete the Dialogue

SS complete a dialogue in pairs using their imagination. Then they act it out in front of the class. Which dialogue was the best? (vote)

E.g.1)

Ann: ...

Ben: My God!

Ann: ...

Ben:...

Ann: A big red one.

E.g.2)

George:...

Sharon:...

George: In the car park, I think.

Sharon:... George:...

Sharon: Thirty-seven pounds fifty!

Half Dictation

T dictates half a sentence, SS complete by themselves and read out at the end.

As soon as she walked into the room…..
I’m having a lot of trouble deciding….
One Saturday morning in late summer….
If you want to lose all of your friends….
All through history, people have…..
Nobody knows who really….
If you climb to the top of a high mountain…..
I believe that everybody should….
They all started laughing because….

SS check spelling with each other, then with T.
You could also stick the sentence halves on SS backs, get them to mingle and copy them down.

Road Trip

Write the alphabet on the board and then say I am going on a road trip. (It's actually a classic game to play with any grade) I say "I'm going on a road trip and I'm taking along my..." (something that stars with A) the next person repeats what the first person said then adds on something that begins with B. And so on. If this takes up too much time then just write on the board only VOWELS or somebody's full name. It is a good vocab builder and memory game! You can also choose a specific theme like only animals, famous people (First or last names, it doesn't matter) or things that are green.

Biographical Deductions

Repeating Chain

It is an enjoyable activity for students to familiarize the subject and have a good laugh at the same time

• Ask your students form a circle.

• Start the chain with a sentence in the target structure.

• The first student remembers and repeats what you said using the correct pronouns, and then adds his own sentence.

• The next student repeats what you and his friend said, and then adds his own sentence.

• The chain goes on like this till the last student.

Who am I?

One of my favourite icebreakers that works well with large classes and students who have just met for the first time, is in fact similar to Seth's writing facts on the white board, except that I don't do facts, but photos, and to a certain extent to Karenne's Power Point presentation, except that I don't create a presentation but a poster.

For my Who am I? activity, I created a poster divided into four parts, each depicting a different topic:

or

Each of the parts contains photos only, so that students have to ask questions if they want to know more about me.

After they've found out "everything" about me, I ask my students to take a piece of paper, divide it into four parts and draw pictures that describe their family, their wishes, their hobbies and what they do. They are not allowed to use words, letters or numbers.
After that, they do a pair-share activity, in which they try to find out more about their partner, based on their drawings. Finally, instead of introducing themselves to the whole class, they introduce their partners.
I've noticed that students talk about their partners in front of the whole class more willingly than they would about themselves. They feel less shy and more confident, as they are not supposed to know everything about the person they've just met.

The Winner Is...

All you need are lots of small pieces of paper (Post It size is good), enough for each student to have one for each question. You can prepare the questions in advance or make them up as you go along.

1) Hand out the pieces of paper.

2) Tell the students that you are going to ask some questions, and to write down their answer to each question on a separate piece of paper.

3) Have somewhere the students can place each paper as they complete it. Alternatively, have students number each paper, so that later it is easy to tell which question it answers.

4) Ask each question. The students should write down their OWN PERSONAL answer.

Sample questions:

Who is the best footballer?
What's the most interesting school subject?
Who is the most beautiful woman?
Who is the best singer?
What's the funniest TV programme?
Who is the fastest motorcyclist/F1 driver?
What's the most difficult school subject?
What's the nicest food?
What's the best book?
What are the coolest clothes?
What's the most dangerous animal?

There are plenty of alternative questions but these are some the ones I posed because we had been looking at these particular adjectives. With higher level groups you could use a wider variety of adjectives.

5) Everybody should now have answered all the questions. Collect in the anonymous answers. Younger students often like to fold up their papers, like in a secret ballot.

6) Announce each "nominee" and elicit the category. For example, "Maths, Science, English, History. The category is ..." (most difficult subject) and then announce the "winner". (The winner is the answer repeated the most times. If all the answers are different, or there is a draw you could have another vote.) My class wanted to take it in turns to come out to the front and read out the nominees. I would then say, in a grand voice, Oscars style "And the winner is..."

Turn-O-Phrase

Turn-O-Phrase will show you two images and you will have to write the name of what is shown. It is a fast and good Ice Breaker