Warmers, Enders, Fillers and Stuff… 1. The Human Clock T has pieces of paper/ card with numbers 1 to 12 written on them (about A4 size) which she puts on the floor in the shape of a clock. She asks the two of the students to be the hands of the clock and says a time and the students have to stand in the correct position. Other sts then take over to say different times and confirm if the sts have moved to the right position. The students who are the clock hands have to change so that all of them gets a turn. 2. Change Places Game Sts sit on chairs in a circle with no spare chairs available and T stands in the middle. T says “Change places if you have ever eaten sushi” for example. Any students that have change places with other students. T continues along this line until the sts get the hang of it and then the T sits in the place of one of the sts who then has to take over the T’s role. The aim is for the st in the middle to ask the question and try to take the spare place. This can be used for anything e.g. present perfect, clothing vocabulary, likes/dislikes. 3. The Human Map This is good with intermediate level up. The T points out certain things in the room to represent places on a map of the world. For example the window might be the north pole and if it is opposite the board would be the south pole the T then stands where for example the England would be and the students
have to stand in places that correspond to where they are from. When everyone is in place the students tell the rest of the class where they are and maybe describe it e.g. language spoken, climate, capital city. The T asks students to move to the country that they would most like to visit – again when in place sts explain why. You can chose any questions that you want. 4. Picture Discovery Very simply you put a picture of anything on the OHP but keep it covered with a piece of paper and gradually uncover it asking sts to guess what it is. Another version is to draw a picture on the board but start with maybe one line and ask students to guess what it is going to be. This can be quite good fun and you don’t need to be good at drawing (it makes is funnier if you are not!) 5. Alien T picks up a normal day to day object and pretends that she is an alien and has never seen it before. Sts have to explain what is it and what it is used for. The T can make this as easy or as difficult as they want. 6. Flower Game. A nice getting to know you game. T draws a flower on the board with four large petals and writes a word or number that is special to her in each petal. Sts have to guess why those words are special and when they have guessed them all they draw their own flower and a milling activity can begin. This
encourages more communication than the usual find someone who activity. 7. Phoneme Board Race T writes a list of words on the board and puts the class into two teams. The T then says a word and the students race to the board to rub out the phoneme that they have heard for example. brooch, bird and egg are among those written on the board and the T says phone and the sts guess which one to erase. This is particularly good with minimal pairs. 8. Yes / No Game The teacher asks the students questions but they are not allowed to say yes or no. If a st says either word they are out of the game. Last one standing is the winner. 9. Intonation Game.