2.2.

Adapting warmers for your lesson

The crafty teacher will learn to use this section for a variety of technical reasons,
and do so in an environment that seems fun or perhaps mildly challenging.
 Everyone loves pronunciation! There is hardly a student of language, no
matter how advanced, that will reject an opportunity to improve their
pronunciation. Here you can work on pronunciation problems that you just
can't fit into the class material. Investigate common pronunciation problems
in your students and devise exercises to treat those problems. For example,
Asian students have problems differentiating “L” and “R”, Spanish students
“Sh” and “Ch”.
 Select the right word:
 Here's an example warmer for any group of words that they find hard to
pronounce or hear because they are similar. Draw a cross on the board and write
in four words they have trouble with. Define the meanings of the words. Then
pronounce the words at random, and get the students to call out the corresponding
letter (A,B,C or D). When they start to do well, ask some of the students to take the
role of caller. Having 20 fellow students misunderstand your pronunciation and
then working to correct that is a very powerful mini-lesson. This particular example
is designed for Spanish speakers from South America, who have trouble
differentiating these when listening and speaking. Changing this for any group is as
easy as changing the words!

 Homophones (words that sound the same):
 Here's one to help them categorise the different “one” and “two” sounds.
You can use it to help them practise “to” vs. “two/too” (long and short).
 Write this on the board and go through the words “race” and “racehorse”
before you begin. Then do the rhyme (the rhythm will be obvious when you start).
For lower level students, you can elicit or give the possible vocabulary on the right.
Then ask them to replace the numbers with the words on the right.
 For more ideas of this type http://homophone.com can give you plenty of
examples of these word groups to build your own activities.

 Conversation and correction: If you are a good conversationalist and
experienced in corrections, you may find you can involve the students in
interesting conversations. You have to have a pretty good knowledge of
grammar and think on your feet constantly in order to exercise only that
language that you wish to be exercised. You will still need to do some
preparation: give them some pictures to comment about (always with people
in them or you'll get mostly bland descriptions), choose an item of jewellery
that someone's wearing and ask about it, something in the news (if they are
at that level). Try to avoid “What did you do on the weekend/last night/this
morning?” questions unless there's been some kind of event - most people
do the same things and they'll be bored of the question after the first two
times. Maps are a great way for generating interest and promoting
spontaneous conversation, whether we have been to a place and wish to
tell, or if we dream of going to a place, the mere presence of a map is a
guaranteed winner for promoting conversation. You can use a map for
names of countries, directions, phrasal verbs (“fly up to NYC”, “go down to
Sydney”, “take the train across to England”), nationalities and countless
more vocabulary groups. You have the whole world to play with!
 Role plays: Warmers can be used to practise the function you taught in the
last class. For example, if the last class was about “Getting through the
 airport”, stand at the door and don't allow a student in until they can answer
those questions (not necessarily perfectly, just enough to get them through
customs). A hit with the children is to have them make the sound of an
animal learned last week.

 Problem areas: Material that you have generally noted to be a problem.
The basics such as alphabet, numbers, ordinal numbers will need constant
revisiting during their early (and sometimes late!) development. With a little
imagination, you can make even the humble alphabet come alive!

 Recite the alphabet:
 The Alphabet Song is how most native English speakers learn and teach the
alphabet. Can you play an instrument? Take it in to class and play along!
 Give me a word:
 Teacher says: “Give me an action beginning with A, give me an action
beginning with B...”
 Word tails: Student says a word, the next student has to say a word
beginning with the last letter of the previous word.
 “Yellow...whale...egg...great...to...” etc.
 This practises both alphabet and vocabulary at the same time.

 Class revision: You can revise word groups that they will need during
class. By doing this, the students can concentrate on the new language,
whether that be colours, shapes, clothes, prepositions, auxiliaries or
adverbs of time.
 Write out lists:
 This can be a simple elicitation of a list of words, such as that found in the
warm-up section of the video. Or, for some student-centred pair or group work, ask
students to work together to list their favourite foods, most hated TV shows,
favourite sounding or written English words. More complicated list-making: “10
things to take on a holiday” or “Create the greatest football team in the world, and
list the attributes for each player“. This last exercise has been known to take a very
long time, and get students arguing and debating, which is fantastic!
 Day/month march:
 Have children march around the room or schoolyard chorusing: “Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday...” or “January, February, March...”, names of
animals...anything!

Simon Says:
 “Simon says touch your nose, Simon says touch your ears...” Revising body
parts.
See Sample Lesson Plan in Part 3.