No-prep warm up activities

Make the most words

Write a topical vocabulary item on the board. In twos or threes, students make as many new words from it as they can. Use longish seed words such as apologise, dictionary or September. Score teams a point per word and award a bonus point for the longest.

Make the longest words

Write a topical target word vertically down the board, for example, WINTER. In twos or threes, students attempt to come up with the longest word that begins with each letter. Give teams a point per word and a bonus point for the longest.

Waterfall Industrious Nausea Terrified Empty Retailer

What does your name mean?

Using a dictionary, google or any other resource, students find and write down an appropriate adjective that begins with each letter of their first name. For example:

Flirtatious, Relaxed, Extrovert, Desirable

Mixed-up sentence

Write a sentence on the board but mix up the word order, then challenge students to reconstruct the original sentence. For example:

morning hadn’t eaten wish that döner kebab I at this 5am

Mixed-up sentence (anagram variation)

Write a sentence on the board but this time scramble the letters of each word. For example:

hwy ddint’ I dusty draher ta vieyunrsit?

What do you know about bananas?

Set a five-minute time limit and in groups have students think up and write down as many facts as they can about bananas (or cats, Belgium, David Beckham, etc.). One point should be given for each true sentence.

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?

The A to Z game

Give students a theme, for example, jobs, things you take on holiday, food. Write the letters A to Z on the board. Teams of students must race to write an appropriate word next to each letter on the board.

Things to do with a potato

(one of many brilliantly simple ideas from this great book) Produce a potato (if that’s not possible, introduce the concept of a potato). Ask students to come up with a list of as many unconventional uses for it as they can. For example paperweight, weapon, pen holder, smartphone dock. The longest list wins the potato.

Odd one out

Give the students a couple of examples to guess, then get students to come up with their own ideas. Here are some examples:

apple, peach, banana, tomato – a banana doesn’t have seeds strawberry, branch, bowling ball, boat, iceberg – bowling balls don’t float window, river, envelope, client, oregano – client doesn’t begin and end with the same letter comb, champagne, knife, plum – the word plum doesn’t contain any silent letters

Note: There can be more than one correct answer

Name ten

Have students think of 10 items that fit particular criteria. For example:

• Jobs where you have to wear a uniform
• English football clubs
• Sports that are played with a ball
• Foods that contain egg
• Animals that lay eggs
• Three letter parts of the body – eye, arm, leg, hip, ear, toe jaw, rib, lip, gum

Two truths and a lie

An ESL classroom staple. Write or dictate three sentences about yourself. Two statements should be true and one false, for example:

I used to be an air steward I can ride a unicycle My favourite food is sushi

Now invite students to discuss in pairs which statement they think is the lie. Ask each pair which statement they think is untrue and have them explain why. Reveal your answer, and ask students to come up with three sentences about themselves. I find students need quite a lot of time (at least five minutes) to come up with three ideas. If some students are still short of a sentence or two, start the game anyway, and they can finish their statements during play. Check students’ statements and then have them take it in turns to read them out to the class. In each case, the other students have to guess which is the untrue statement.

Mastermind (AKA Bulls & Cows, Jotto)

Based on the code-breaking board game where players have to deduce the order of 4 coloured pegs which the other player had hidden behind a plastic guard. It’s slightly complicated to grasp but fun when you get the hang of it.

Think of a four letter word and write XXXX on the board, each X represents one of the letters of your word.

Invite the first student to guess what the word is.

Start a new line underneath your original XXXX. If the first letter in the student’s word is the same as the first letter in your word put a ✓ in the first position. If the first letter is not the same as the first letter in your word but is contained somewhere in your word put a half-tick /. If the first letter of the student’s word is not contained anywhere your word put an X.

In the following example, the teacher chooses the word FIRE.

XXXX XXXX – COAT X/XX – BEST X✓X✓ – HIKE /✓X✓ – RIDE ✓✓✓✓ – FIRE

A word of warning. Stick to 4 or 5 letter words. It’s much more difficult to guess longer words and it can also be tricky trying to mark each guess.

When students are familiar with the game you can get them to come and put their own words on the board.

I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking a …

This is a guess the rule type game. Think of a rule which governs which items can be taken on a picnic, for example, it must be six letters long, or it must start with a vowel. In this example, the rule is that the word must be an uncountable noun.

Teacher: I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking milk. Student A: I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking eggs. Teacher: No, you can’t take eggs. Student B: Can I take orange juice? Teacher: Yes, you can take orange juice. Etc.

Continue until students guess the rule. If they’re not making any progress, continue to add further items you would take e.g. love, information, air (the choices don’t have to make sense within the picnic scenario). Invite the students alone or in pairs to come up with their own rules and let them run the game.

Word Association

Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be surprisingly effective and word games don’t get any simpler than word association. Give an initial word, for example, banana and each student takes it in turns to say a word which they associate with the previous word. If the connection isn’t obvious, challenge the student to justify their choice.

banana – monkey – zoo – tourists – hotel – bible …

Three things in common

This is a great icebreaker, but you can also use it as a lead-in to a theme or to test your students’ knowledge of a grammar point. Simply ask students to work in pairs and find three things that they have in common and then report back to the class. You can narrow the topic down to areas like three things we both did at the weekend, three foods we both like, three things we both don’t like about this city, three things neither of us has done yet but would like to, etc.

Just a Minute Tic Tac Toe

Based on the BBC Radio show. Draw a Tic Tac Toe grid on the board and in each space write a topic that you think some of your students might be interested in or have some knowledge of. Play the game with two teams, to claim their X or O, a team member must attempt to talk about the topic in the chosen square for 45 to 60 seconds (depending on their level) without pausing or repetition.

One-upmanship

Start off by explaining the concept of one-upmanship, that some people always like to appear to be more interesting or superior to others in their company. Tell the students a relatively mundane story about something that happened recently and invite a student to tell a similar story but to top it in some way. Each student, in turn, tries to top the previous student’s tale. For example:

You: Yesterday I overslept and was five minutes late to class. Student: That’s nothing, I overslept and was an hour late. Student B: An hour! I once overslept a whole day!

Spontaneous Scatter Sheet

It's a great way to review vocabulary, introduce a theme and get students talking. As a warmer, have students brainstorm words connected to a theme, for example, the seaside, London, marketing, etc. Write these words on the board randomly, not in straight lines or columns but higgledy-piggledy and at jaunty angles. When you have around 20 words on the board, go around the room asking each student, in turn, to describe one of the words, when it’s been successfully guessed, circle it and move on to the next student. Encourage students to let the describer produce at least two sentences before shouting out the answer.

Spin the marker

Sometimes students just want a chance to talk and express themselves in an unstructured way and it’s a good idea to encourage this. Spin the marker pen and whoever it points to can dictate the conversation, ask questions, suggest the topic, etc. Spin the marker again when you feel the conversation has run its course. I find this activity works best when students are sitting in a small circle not too far apart.

Fortunately / Unfortunately

English learners often have trouble remembering and correctly pronouncing these two useful words. One way to practice it is to start a story and have learners alternately advancing the story using these adverbs.

For example:

Teacher: Yesterday my car was stolen.

Student A: Fortunately, it was insured.

Student B: Unfortunately, the insurance company went bankrupt.

Student C: Fortunately, my grandfather said he would buy me a new car.

Student D: Unfortunately, he’s lost his mind and doesn’t have any money.

Etc.

Organise yourselves!

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

Letter string dictation

This is a great way to lead into the topic that you want to cover in the class and also serves as a good way to review the alphabet. Think of a couple of questions for students to discuss in pairs or groups. Write the questions down and then dictate them as a long string of letters. For example,

whatdidyoudoattheweekend?

whatkindofbooksdoyouliketoread?

whichhistoricalfiguredoyoumostadmire?

After dictating the letter strings, students should attempt to form the questions and then discuss and report back to class.

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