5 Mind Blowing ESL Warmers For Your ESL Learners
Connecting every EFL student by putting them in the right frame of mind to learn the English language is important. As a skilled 21st-century ESL instructor, your responsibility is to make your students relaxed and comfortable in speaking English in a positive environment. To achieve this, a great approach is by planning an effective warmer. Warmers help a lot in the introduction to ESL classes as these helps break the ice of the class.
It is also important that you make sure your learners are interested and engaged in your ESL lessons. Reasons can be various, your EFL lesson maybe just after lunch or even in the evening after a full day of work…consequently, your learners might be exhausted or distracted.
You may use warmers in -
- Warmers help to refresh and energize students
- To break the ice
- Warmers help to establish your lesson
- To familiarize learners with English
- Warmers help to relax learners and make them feel more comfortable
- To lead into the topic of the lesson
- Warmers help to revise previous lessons
A warmer needs to be engaging and communicative.
5 ESL Warmers For Your Lessons
Here are some fantastic ESL warmers that every TEFL teacher should know -
1. Hot Seat
Organize the learners in different groups so that one individual is sitting with their back to the whiteboard but facing their group affiliates. Now, write a word on the board. The students who are facing the board must define the word. The apprentice in the hot seat must guess what the word is and the first set of students have to guess the word correctly… wins a point. The groups then change their seats so that a new person is in the hot seat. For more advanced ESL classes you may write phrases or even whole sentences.
2. What’s your name?
For practicing adjectives, this is a fantastic warmer. It is best for your first or second TEFL lesson with a group of apprentices. If you have got a large TEFL/TESOL class, separate them into smaller groups working beside each other to make sure the activity quickly engages every person. Ask your students to stand in a circle and think of an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name. However, it doesn’t have to be accurate and other learners may help out with recommendations if somebody can’t think of an appropriate word. If you’re short on space, you may easily do this warmer with students sitting at their desks.
3. Line-Up
Ask the class, ‘How long does it take you to get to institute?’. Try to provoke several answers. Now, tell the students to line up against the wall, from the shortest time at one end, to the longest time at the other. Now, once the apprentices are lined up, split them into duos. Ask them to talk about a correlated topic that can be of anything. Repeat the line-up with a different question. You may use more than one training so the warmer can spread for as long as you want it to. This is certainly a simple warmer that aids TEFL students to start speaking with each other.
4. Word Chain
Word Chain is a wonderful yet simple ESL game or warmer for teens as well as adult ESL students. This can be used as a warmer at the start of your class or a filler between classroom activities in class. Divide your apprentices into two or three teams and have them form lines facing the board. There should be at least 2m space between the first learner of each team and the board. Give the first student of each team a board marker and this is how the chain will continue.
5. Picture Mingle
Each ESL learner draws three things related to their life, for example, their house, pet, and neighbor. Now, get students to stick the post-it to their front or their arm. After that play some music and ask students to dance around the room. When the music stops, students ask the person nearest them about their pictures, play the music again and repeat quite a few times.
Conclusion
Once you’ve got the results of tried and tested warmers, you can also make up some of your own ESL warmers. A brilliant warmer is short, fun, interesting, gets everyone talking, and encompasses every student. All of the important ESL teaching skills and strategies can be acquired from the TEFL advanced diploma course online.
We’d love to hear about your best ESL warmers…share them in the comment section. Let’s spread the knowledge together!
