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Weekend Warmers

Faces Aim of the activity To encourage the students to talk about their weekend Preparation One sheet of paper with a smiley face on it and one piece of paper with an unhappy face on it. Procedure Put the smiley face on the wall at one end of the classroom and the unhappy face at the other end of the classroom. Ask the students to stand up and arrange themselves in a line between the two faces according to how good or bad their weekend was. They will have to speak to one another to find out who had the best/worst time and negotiate their place in the line. Alternative Ask the class a question about their weekend/their past For example:

“How did you feel at 9pm on Saturday night?” “How did you feel at 8am on Sunday morning?” or “How did you feel on your first day at school?” “How did you feel on your last birthday?”

Then get the students to stand next to the appropriate “face” and discuss why they felt that way with their classmates. You might like to add an “in-between” face for the less extreme emotions! (See scanned originals folder for pictures)

Music circle Aim of the activity This is a good activity for getting the students moving if they have been sitting in their seats for a while. Preparation You will need a CD with some lively music on it. Procedure Ask the students to form two circles of equal number, one inside the other. Tell them that they are going to move when you play the music - the inner circle should

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move in a clockwise direction and the outer circle should move in an anticlockwise direction. Start the music. After a while, stop the music and tell the students to face the person opposite them in the other circle - then call out an instruction. For example:

Ask the person opposite you what time they got up this morning. Ask the person opposite you where they are going for their summer holidays Ask the person opposite you who their favourite pop group/actor/author is Ask the person opposite you what they're doing tonight Ask the person opposite you what they had for dinner last night

When the students have asked and answered one of the questions, play the music again for a while and call out a different instruction when the music stops. Repeat the activity as often as you like.

Stand in line Aim of the activity To get the students up and moving. Preparation Depends on the line-up you decide to do. Procedure Ask the students to stand in line according to one of the following criteria: • the first letter of their first name • their date of birth • the time they went to bed or got up this morning • Hand out one picture card to each student and ask them to line up according to the

first letter of the word it represents by saying their word out aloud. • Hand out a clock face with a different time on it to each student in the class and ask

them to line up in chronological order by saying the time on their clock out aloud. • Divide the class into groups, mix up the letters of a word and give one letter to each

student in the group. Call out the complete word and ask them to get into the correct order to spell the word.

• Mix up the words of a sentence and give one word to each student in the group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order to make a sentence by saying their word out aloud.

• Mix up the lines of a poem, a limerick or a song and give one line to each student in the group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order of the poem or song by saying their line out aloud.

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Frustration: Speaking Preparation and Procedure Give everyone in the class lots of small pieces of paper and ask the students to write the name of someone famous on each piece. This person can be living or dead, real or a fictional character. However, the name should be someone that is familiar to the whole class. Tell students to screw the papers up and to throw them into a box that you circulate around the class. The class should sit in a circle and be divided into two teams. One student from Team A takes a paper from the box and tries to explain who the person is to their team without saying the name. For example, if the name were Michael Jackson: Student: “He was American………..a pop singer …..the king of pop”. If nobody from Team A guesses, the student should replace the paper and take another. They only have 30 seconds before the turn goes to a student from Team B.

60 seconds: Speaking Preparation and Procedure Divide the class into groups of three (a group of four if there is an extra student). Students in each group take it in turns to be the referee. The referee chooses a subject which Student A must talk about for 60 seconds. Student B can challenge Student A if they think Student A has hesitated or gone off the subject. If the referee agrees, Student B earns a point. It is then Student B’s turn to talk for 60 seconds. If the referee disagrees, Student A gets a point and continues talking. This is very good practice for oral exams.

How many words?: Vocabulary Preparation and Procedure A very popular word game. Write the following grid on the board:

Ask students to call out nine different letters. Make sure they offer you a nice selection of vowels and consonants. Put them into the grid.

M B A R E L S D U

Tell the students they have 5 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. The word can only contain these letters and each letter can only be used once.

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They score as follows: 3 letter word – 5 points 4 letter word – 10 points 5 letter word – 25 points 6 letter word – 50 points 7 letter word – 100 points 8 letter word – 500 points 9 letter word – 1,000 points

Telegrams: Vocabulary Preparation and Procedure The class calls out 10 letters which are written up on the board. Teams then have to create a telegram using the 10 letters as the first letter of each word. For example: L, M, J, S, A, H, W, C, T, B Lost my jeans. Staying at home. Where could they be?

Last letter first: Vocabulary Preparation and Procedure The class decides on a category, for example “Travel” or “Food”. Student A gives an example of this category. Student B must think of another word from the same category starting with the last letter of the previous word. For example: Student A: “Airport” Student B: “Traveller” Student C: “Road” This can be played in small teams or as a whole class activity. Allow students a set time to come up with a word, for example 10 seconds. Perhaps give them three “lives”. They lose a life each time they fail to think of a word.

Zero preparation story Procedure Ask the class to give you ten words from memory from the last lesson, which are then put onto the board. In pairs, they must put the words together in a sentence/sentences that makes grammatical sense. Give marks for the most succinct, the funniest etc. For example: famous holy cabbage church therefore penguin perfume fill assume ready

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Example sentence: The penguin thought the cabbage was holy. It therefore assumed it was ready to fill the famous church with its perfume. You can adjust the difficulty level of the exercise by giving students a time limit, or saying they only have to use 3, 4 or 5 words, for example.