As teachers, we all know what it feels like to walk into a classroom and find that the students are half asleep, unmotivated or they look at you as if to say "Oh no, not English again!" We also know what it's like to finish our class 5 or 10 minutes early and risk total chaos if we don't have a backup activity prepared and waiting to go. ESL warm-up or time-filling activities are essential in the English classroom. Students may be tired or have other things on their minds and diving straight into a textbook or grammar explanation can often lead to disastrous results. With a good warmup activity, you can put your students into English study mode, making them attentive, interested, and ready to participate. A warmup activity can also serve to review language from a previous lesson or prepare the class for a new topic. No-preparation ESL Warm-up activities Here is a list of warm-up activities you can use which don’t require any preparation. Most of them can, of course,...
David White is an Australian English teacher who has been living in Peru since 2001. In partnership with his wife Claudia, they are the owners of ¨English For You Language Institute´, an institute that specializes in the teaching of all levels of English from Basic (A1) to Advanced (C2) including international exam preparation. They are also the owners of ELT Educational Services and David is also the Headmaster of the American School, a respected bilingual ib school in Northern Peru.