ТЕМА: warming up

You need a CD or tape with a beat on and you call out the actions to which the children respond in the following ways:

Kick it - children kick in front of them (ensure they're all in a space first!)
Twist it - twist their bodies half way around then back, feet remaining in same place on the floor.
Spin it - children turn around
Pull it - imagine they are pulling two levers down from above their heads.
Bop it - jump in the air.

They must try to do all these actions on the beat of the music. Now students can make their beat. The older students love it!

Spin the Bottle

BottleSit Ss in a circle with a bottle in the middle. T Spins the bottle. When it stops spinning the S it is pointing to has to answer a question. If the answer is correct then that S can spin the bottle. This is a good class warm up activity (e.g. What did you do last weekend? Did it rain yesterday? What did you have for breakfast this morning?).

Air drawing
Demonstrate this game first. Draw an animal in the air with your index finger. The students watch carefully and try to guess which animal it is, e.g. Is it a (whale)? The first student to guess correctly then takes a turn at the front to draw an animal for the other students to guess.

Fruit basket
This is a great game to review sets of words, such as colors, animals, fruit, numbers, clothing, etc. Have the students sit in a circle. Assign each student a word. Start with only two or three words, e.g. "apple", "banana" and "peach". Then the teacher stands in the middle and calls out one of the words, e.g. Banana! All the students with that word get up and run to exchange places in the circle. At the same time, the teacher runs to take a seat, so that one student is left standing. Then that student stands in the middle, calls out one of the words and tries to take a seat as the other students run to change places. Once in a while, the person in the middle calls out Fruit basket! Then everyone in the circle runs to change places.

Board Race is a fun game that is used for revising vocabulary, whether it be words from the lesson you've just taught or words from a lesson you taught last week. It can also be used at the start of the class to get students active. It is a great way of testing what your students already know about the subject you're about to teach.

Why use it? Revising vocabulary; grammar

Split the class into two teams and give each team a colored marker.
Draw a line down the middle of the board and write a topic at the top.
The students must then write as many words as you require related to the topic in the form of a relay race.
Each team wins one point for each correct word. Any words that are unreadable or misspelled are not counted.