Unit III Why warm up?

Vocabulary

ice-breakers

rapport

to loosen up

to get someone alert

language skills

pre-skill activities

target language

The Importance of Warming Up Students

by Chris Cotter

The warm up of a lesson often receives less attention than it should. Teachers spend a lot of time preparing explanations and worksheets to introduce and practice the target language, for example. They then enter the classroom unprepared for the first five or ten minutes. "Let's do something fun" usually constitutes all the planning that goes into this stage of the lesson. Planning then gets done on the way to the classroom, with the teacher pulling a game out of his bag of tricks. Every teacher with more than one month's experience is guilty, including myself. But a well-planned, effective warm up offers more towards the lesson than just a bit of fun. Because it's the first activity of the lesson, the warm up sets the tone for the next ninety minutes. An activity that students find too difficult, or even confusing, results in a class of disinterested zombies. Similarly, a writing-based activity won't get the students communicating. This then translates into a quiet class session in which you have to prod and push the students to volunteer examples or simple answers. A fun warm up, on the other hand, raises energy levels. Fun activities also produce relaxed, less inhibited students. With the right warm up, you'll have created a positive atmosphere to practice and experiment with the language.

The warm up gets students into "English mode." If you teach EFL in China or Japan, the lesson may represent the only chance for students to use the language. In other words, they might not have spoken English since the last session, be that two days, one week, or one month ago. Even if your students encounter and use English every day, it still takes some time to prepare for the intensive ninety minutes of classroom time. To fully get into "English mode," as I like to call it, a warm up should last about ten minutes. I'm assuming your lessons meet for ninety minutes, so a sixty minute session can shave a few minutes from this figure. Without enough time to get warmed up, though, students will continue to make mistakes during the early stages of the lesson - important time needed to present and drill the new material. Students may be slow to understand, too, again because those wheels aren't turning yet. As a final comment, if the warm up takes too long, say fifteen minutes, then valuable time gets lost from the main focus of the lesson. Students have less time to acquire the new material. An effective warm up serves as a springboard into the topic or target language of the lesson. If the lesson focuses on how to make hotel reservations, then a few lower-intermediate questions will get everyone thinking about the topic. The warm up activates already held information, in this case about hotels and hotel reservations. There's the chance, too, that students may even inadvertently produce some of the key language, which you can make note of and use to present the target material.

A conversation-based warm up between the students allows you to sit back, observe, and assess everyone's ability. Assessment proves especially important if you see different faces each session. But even a class with regular attendance will catch students on good and bad days. Let's say everyone is a bit tired and unfocused, in which case you'll have to scale back the lesson objective. On the other hand, you may have to expand the scope if everyone uses the target language correctly from the get-go. You can also assess who will partner well together, and who won't. Strong students may not want to work with weak students, or a middle-aged housewife may feel most comfortable with a woman her age. Although you won't be able to fully determine abilities or personalities for later pair and group work, assessment here will signal any potential problems or conflicts at the very least. Here are some final comments about warm ups: Don't correct the students. Assistance is fine, especially if some people have difficulty participating in the activity. But remember: your students still aren't in thinking in English, so they'll make mistakes even with familiar material. If you have ever studied a foreign language, do you remember how far into the conversation you began to feel comfortable? Which point is easier, the first few exchanges in a conversation, or five minutes into it? In addition, correction not only interrupts the flow of the activity, it also generates a teacher-centered lesson. As mentioned, the warm up sets the tone for the next ninety minutes. If you participate in the activity, especially in a small-sized class, it turns the focus towards you, too. To offer an example, in a class of two, you first talk to a student one-on-one for a few minutes, then do the same with the second student. In so doing, you've established yourself as a participant rather than a guide. The students won't be as quick to volunteer information or participate in conversations unless you initiate and run them. This steals valuable talk time from the students, and creates more hesitant speakers inside and outside the classroom. Compare an activity in which you write three questions on the board, and instruct the students to pair up and sustain the conversation for at least five minutes. Always strive for an atmosphere in which the students take responsibility for the language they produce. I often use the following to measure my involvement in the class: If the students are in the middle of an activity when I write info on the board for the next step of the lesson, no one even notices until the activity begins to wind down. Because the warm up opens the class session, it sets the atmosphere and expectations of the lesson. It also allows you important assessment opportunities, which will later determine the type of activities, who will partner with whom, and the scope of the lesson. Always give equal consideration to the warm up as to other steps of the lesson. The result will be a more focused and positive group of students performing to your expectations.

Task 1

In teaching we can sort out three types of warm-ups. What are they? Look at the following definitions, sort them out into columns and name the three types of warm-ups accordingly.

• Activity that quickly builds up rapport (mutual understanding) and facilitates “readiness” in pupils.

• Short activities for use at the start of class periods. They are designed to get students' attention, to help them put aside distracting thoughts, and to get them ready to focus individually and as groups on whatever activities follow.

• A fun, moving around activity that breaks the ice, loosens people up, gets people alert and engaged. Good for a group just beginning to get to know each other.

• Activities that help your learners put aside their daily distractions and focus on English. If they haven't used English all day, they may take a little while to shift into it.

• Activities that encourage whole-group participation which can build a sense of community within the group.

• Activities that create a positive group atmosphere and help people to relax.

• Activities that energize and motivate.

• Activities at the start of the lesson are very important for the following reasons:

a. They set the tone for the lesson.

b. They get students to begin thinking in and focusing on English.

• Activities that provide a transition into the topic or some skill development activity.

• An activity to help the students relax and settle into the class. The warm-up is often a game, just to start things on a "fun" level.

• Something that prepares you for an activity or event, usually because it is a short practice or example of what the activity or event will involve.

• They are pre-skill activities.

• Something that prepares the learners for language skills work.

Task 2

Read and comment on the activities suggested. What are the advantages and possible problems of each of them?

I'm looking for ideas on how to get to know a new class, "icebreaker" activities, not only for me but more importantly so that the students will get to know each other. Any suggestions?

Getting-to-know-you games

I'm not usually a fan myself of embarrassing ice-breakers, but as a teacher I've really found that they break down the tension in a new group and can really lead to the creation of a nice classroom environment in which everyone feels comfortable speaking and participating. Here are my favourite. (I should add, I work with advanced learners, young adults, so some activities may need adaptation for beginners / children).

1) Speed dating: Students have 30 seconds (you can make this longer if you don't want to stress them out as much! But it's quite funny with such a tight time limit) to talk to another student in the class and find out about them. Then they move on and talk to another student for 30 seconds, then another, etc. At the end of the 30-second 'rounds', we come back together and everyone who talked to a particular student is asked to contribute what they found out. Of course name, age, home town/country, what they study/work as, etc are the most standard questions, but if everyone only asks these questions you get fairly boring introductions, so it's important to encourage students to be creative with what they ask. That way you also hear funny stories about past holidays, for example, or how many pairs of shoes someone has, the craziest person they know, etc - the possibilities for creativity are endless. The stress usually makes it funny, and forms bonds between the students - they're all "dealing with the stress situation" together.

2) Find someone who: Each student is given a sheet with a list (I'd say 10-20) of attributes / characteristics and asked to find one other student in the class (find someone who...) who fulfils each of these and write their names on the sheet. You can devise your own set according to the group, if you know them, but standard suggestions are: is not wearing jeans, has one sister, has eaten sushi, was born outside of this country, has a tattoo, doesn't eat meat, likes reggae music, etc. Then feedback together as a group to see who has done / does what. This helps students learn each others names, as they have a bit more information to 'attach' name information too in their memories.

3) Warmer. Elect student artist, get student to draw 5 things on the board that are important to you, the teacher now, and you want to talk about. For me that’s a dog, a book, a mountain, a gold bar, and a smiley face.

Get students to speculate/discuss/ and ask questions to find out what this all represents. (I miss my dog, I’m reading a lot, I just moved to Switzerland, it’s expensive, but I like it.)

Give students a post it or blank piece of paper, get them to draw 5 pictographs representing things they want to chat about, things that are important to them at the moment. Give students a time limit to wander about and catch up with each other and explain their pictures.

I'd like to share with you two ice-breakers I've been using for quite a long time and I dare say that they do work.

The first one is for your students to get to know you. I usually start classes with this. As soon as I enter a new class I tell my name and a few other things. It's up to you how much you want to reveal to your Ss, and I tell my students that we are going to play a kind of game to get to know me. I put them in groups of 5 or 6 Ss- I usually teach groups of 25 to 30 Ss and assign a secretary in each group. Their task is to come up with any questions they want concerning me and my teaching and write them down. While the groups are doing this I go out of the classroom. I've found out that in the absence of the teacher they are more creative. Depending on the level of the students, I might put the following restriction: questions which are grammatically wrong or do not make sense cannot be answered. It's a fun activity but it takes some time.

The second is for Ss to get to know each other. Pair Ss and tell them they have only one minute to talk about themselves to their partner using the sentence "I'm a person who…" when they finish their partner has 40 seconds to repeat as much as their partner said to them using the phrase "You are a person who..." Then the same procedure has to be repeated with the other partner. Ask Ss to present their partners. It's a fast activity that requires attention and listening carefully to remember the information.

Task 3

Work individually. Fill in the gaps with appropriate words. The general goal of warming-up activities is to help learners learn better. Specific aims of pre-skill activities are:

• to create expectations about language, so ________ learners can understand better what is going to happen

• to give learners _____ reason to listen, read, speak or write

• to ______________ learners to want to read, listen, speak or write

• to interest or ___________ learners in a topic

• to involve learners ______ asking for their ideas or knowledge about the topic

• to introduce or pre-teach vocabulary or ___________ language which might otherwise prevent learners from understanding

• to __________ attention to something of importance

• to provide links between different stages of a lesson

Task 4

Look at the text and the tasks suggested. (Supplement Pages p.42) Which of these are pre-reading tasks? What do they aim at? Do you think they are enough to prepare students for doing the reading? What else would you add?

Task 5

Design pre-skill activities for the tasks offered to you by the teacher.

Reflection

Do you think warming-up activities for productive and receptive skills will be the same? Comment on similarities and differences; give examples from your own learning experience.