ESL Warm Up Activities

A-Z Game

Working in teams, students should come up with words that are related to a
certain topic and start with each letter of the alphabet, from A to Z. For
example, for the “food” topic the words would be “apple“, “butter“,
“cheese“, and so on. The winning team of this ESL warmup should complete
the entire alphabet first. This can also be done by one student in a tutoring
session.

Organize Yourselves
During this group warm up activity, you should tell your students to arrange
themselves according to a given criteria, such as age, name, street where
they live, and so on. Students should then have to tell you why they
organized this way, using proper grammar.

Make The Longest Words

Write down a word of minimum five letters and tell your students to make up
words that start with each letter of this word. It is desirable that the word has
no repeating letters. The winner or the winning team should make up the
longest word. For example: TABLE – Terrified, Ambiguous, Blossom,
Landscape, Empty. The students can also do the same with the letters of
their names. It help with ESL pronunciation lessons.

Check out these fun pronunciation games and exercises for your ESL
students.

Anagrams
Mix up the letters and/or words in a sentence and encourage your students
to find the right order and decipher the sentence.

Facts

Give the students any topic and suggest that they write down as many true
facts as they know about this topic. For example, they can write down the
facts about dogs.

Fitting In
Show your students a bowl, a flower pot, a basket or any similar item, and
suggest that they name the items that would fit into this bowl/pot/basket.

Odd One Out

Name or write down a range of concepts or items and tell your students
to find one concept or item that does not fit in. The odd concepts and items
should be somewhat related to other concepts and items in the range, but
still have some slight differences, so they should be not that easy to guess.
For example, “table, chair, bed, fridge, sink” – bed is odd because in most
cases you cannot find a bed in the kitchen. However, some students could
also name fridge or sink, and it makes this task a bit complicated. You can
also encourage the students to make up their own range of concepts or
items with odd ones.

Idioms
In this vocabulary warm up exercise, you should give the students one word
and suggest that they think of idioms that contain this word. For example,
“blue” – “out of the blue“, “feel blue“, etc. They can also make up the
sentences with those idioms.

Questions
Write down different questions on pieces of paper, put them in a basket, and
turn on some music. Ask the students to sit in a circle and hand this basket
over to each other until you stop the music. The person who is holding the
basket at that moment should take a piece of paper out of the basket and
answer the question.

What can you tell about cookies?

Give out cookies or other sweets to everyone, and tell the class to describe
the sweets – their color, shape, etc. – and analyze their quality, such as taste,
crispiness, etc. They can also tell a story about those sweets.

Categories
The leader thinks of a category, such as “fruit”. In a circle, everyone
should name a fruit within a limited time period – the leader usually counts to
five. If someone takes too long to give an answer or gives an incorrect
answer, then that person is out and a new category begins. In the end, only
one person remains.

Word chain
The students toss a ball to each other and name the words that start with the
last letter of the previous word, forming the chain. For example, “ball“ –
“lamp“ – “pie“, and so on.

Empty Comics
Find a comic strip and wipe out the words from the bubbles. The students
should guess what the comic characters are saying.

We hope that this list of ESL warm up activities will help you plan more
effective lessons for your students and keep them engaged throughout the
entire lesson, whether you’re an teach online in the classroom. If you’re
looking for more, check out our guides to fun ESL games and
activities, speaking activities and comprehensible input strategies and
activities.

The A to Z game – a quick and fun

vocabulary race

The A to Z game is a fun and

occasionally rowdy vocabulary game and a surefire way to inject
some energy into the classroom. It’s ideal as a warmer and is a
great way to introduce new topics. Themes might include
adjectives, jobs, food, things you take on holiday, etc. If you like
this activity you should check out the big list of fun, no
preparation warm-up activities.

How to play
Write the letters A to Z in columns down the board (see the
illustration). Make sure that there’s enough space next to each
letter for a word to be written.
Divide the class into two teams (three is possible but can get
chaotic). Get each team to nominate a writer who comes to the
front and stands at the board.

Each writer will need a different coloured board pen or piece of

chalk.

As soon as you say start, students must race to write an

appropriate word next to each letter. For example, if the theme is
adjectives then they might write. Angry, Beautiful, etc. Teammates
help by shouting out suggestions and giving spelling tips. I don’t
stop my students from using any resources they have to hand
such as textbooks and dictionaries. Only one word can be written
for each letter so the first to start writing claims the letter.

After a five or ten minute limit, or when all the letters have been
used (I usually leave out X) give a point for every word each team
has written, and congratulate the winners. If there are any spelling
mistakes then elicit the correct spelling from the class.

How many sounds can you hear?

Students sit in silence for two minutes and write down every
sound that they hear. Let them compare their lists with their
neighbours before seeing who has the longest list?

Organise yourselves!
Have students arrange themselves in order according to a given
criterion. For example by age, alphabetical order of first name or
surname, the number of shoes owned, etc.

Whose weekend?
Give each student a slip of paper and ask each student to write down three things they did at
the weekend. Collect up the slips of paper and randomly read each one out. The students
must guess whose weekend is being described.