I have just finished a training course on planning, and our trainer told us about how important warmers are at the beginning of a lesson. Please can you give me some examples of warmers you can use? Thanks!

This question is from Adriana, Colombia

What's your opinion?
Annamaria D. Kalmar, Hungary
Warmers are essential for achieving success in teaching. They work as 'keys' for opening and mobilizing the brain of students, participating as members of a class/group or learning in a one-to-one system. My warmers are always 'tailored'at the moment of appearance of my student, i.e. they are flexible and adapting to the student's mood and readiness for work. These warmers are usually dialogues generated about very simple events of every day life, or putting questions about popular topics, or dropping in several words to find synonymes for them, their aim is common: to distress the student and enhance fluent speaking or writing.

Engel Ariza, Colombia
Yes, warmers are very important. They let you break routine and students get used to waiting for warmers from you every time they have a class. There are different kinds of warmers you can use. For instance, make a question like this: Do you know what happened to me before getting ready to come to school? Or, Do you know what happened to me on my way here? Or, Do you know what is interesting about being a child? etc... Or just, have one of your students tell any little story about something.

Chiara Tagarelli, Italy
I like to sometimes review new vocabulary from the previous lesson by asking questions using the new word. eg. the word "scribble" - Could you all please scribble your name on a piece of paper and hand it to me? The reaction to such a question may throw them off at first but then the word will come back to them and they would usually start asking what paper etc. I like to somehow elicit an interactive response from students rather then just defining with words.

Nicola, Japan
As long as you have more than 4 students and a board, "shiritori" and "categories" are both great games. Put the students into teams (any number of students, any number of teams is ok). They take turns in coming to the board and writing an English word. In shiritoti, the next word must start with the letter the word before ended with and in categories, it has to be a word related to a topic you chose, for example food, fruit, emotions, colours, etc. Give them a goal of for example 12 words and the first team to write with perfect spelling and no repeated words from their or another team's list is the winner.

Another favourite of mine is criss-cross. This only works if the students are in rows though. One column stands up and you ask questions. The first student to raise their hand can answer the question. If they get it right, they sit down. Continue until only one student is standing. The row that intersects with that student then stands up. Repeat until you are out of questions. If you aren't in rows, you can do with a box and ball. Put the questions in a box and have them pass the box and ball to music. When the music stops, the student with the box takes a question and asks it to the student with the ball. For higher level students you can let them make the questions themselves.

Maria Teresa Padron Flores, Chile
Write the alphabet on the board and ask your students to tell or write an adjective for each letter.Then ask them to tell or write a proper noun.If your have time or according to the level they have, you can use these pairs of words in a sentence.
To practise questions you can write some possible answers (favourite color, your address, date of birth, number of brothers, etc) and ask them to make the correct question for each answer.

Nguyen Tan Thanh, Vietnam
You can play the game called "Shark Attack!" in which you ask your students to guess each letter in the word/phrase given by you which is related to the subject of the lesson. First, draw a picture with a girl standing on the steps near a big shark
Second, tell the rule: If students guess a correct letter, the girl keeps standing there. Otherwise, she will have to step down one step. After 3 or 4 wrong letters, students will lose & the girl will be eaten by the shark.

Samir Ibrahim, Syria
I think every English course book offers some kind of warming up. However, teachers who don't use a specific course need to search for suitable warmers to start with. You need to find appropriate warmers for each lesson. If your lesson concentrates on some grammar, you can use a small drill about the usage of the verb "make" for example:

You have to ...... your bed.
Don't ..... noise, please.
I usually ...... dinner for my family.
How can you ..... friends?

This drill is useful as well as interesting. It will make a brilliant brainstorming and it will make some fun. If your lesson focus on story telling for example, you can start with brief story with a joke if you can. Lessons of listing can be started with listening to a light song.
I hope this would help.

Brenda Engberts, Malaysia
One of my favourite ways to warm up a class is to get them brainstorming in groups. Usually I think about what we've been studying and try to recycle vocabulary. I tell them to draw a line horizontally and vertically across the page (so they have four boxes), then, for example, I tell them to write 'five sports you play with a ball' in the first box. First team to get five gets a point (they read the list to the class). Next, 'five sports that involve water', etc. You can be creative with the lists you ask your students to create.
Sometimes I give them 4 or 5 minutes to brainstorm in their groups as many things as possible on a theme: for example, 'things that are round'. 'Things made of plastic'. 'Things with a hole'. 'Things you can do with a paper cup', etc. The possibilities are endless, and it's a fun, active way to get them warmed up and thinking in English.

Glynis Griffiths, France
I have used the game 'Two Truths and a Lie'. It can be used for one-one or group lessons, it is especially good with students who are new to you. Write on the board 2 true and one non-true statement about yourself. The students need to ask you questions to discover which statements are which. You may only answer 'Yes' or 'No' to the questions. It can generate a lot of fun and gets students speaking. Your statements don't have to be based on true facts, invention about the truths and lie can make the warm-up very funny.

Rocío Garcia Fernandez, Mexico
I always begin my lessons with a warmer or ice-breaker. This not only relaxes my students but myself too. One of my favourite warmers or ice-breakers is to ask my Ss to complete sentences such as: Something nice that happened to me yesterday was... or One of my favourite friends/relatives is______ because... or I have always dreamt of... and I'm working on it. The rule is they have to use real information about themselves. They can complete the sentence and then share with a partner or if your group of students is not too big, ask each student to complete the sentence for the whole group.

Gilberto Ramos, Brazil
In my opinion an important warmer is start the class, introducing some questions to remember the last class. It's a way to offer a base to the student keep concentrated on the the last class. But, it depends on the level or student's ability to remember what he learned again