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Objectives of The first class meeting: The first class meeting should serve at least two basic purposes: o To clarify all reasonable questions students might have relative to the course objectives, as well as your expectations for their performance in class.o Consider a "Homework" voluntary-mandatory office hour. The assignment is simply to make an appointment with you at a convenient time, find your office and visit you there before the next class or two. This gets students to your office, breaks the ice with a short one-on-one interaction, and makes it much more likely that the students will come back for help when they need it. o Establish a culture of feedback. Let students know you are interested in how they experience the course and in any suggestions they have. Let them know you will do formal early course evaluations, but that they should feel free to give you constructive feedback, even anonymously. You might not adopt every suggestion they have but you will listen and consider them. This starts to create a partnership in learning. 6. Collect baseline data on students' knowledge and motivation This objective stems directly from the second overarching goal for the first day of class. Collect data about baseline knowledge. This can take several forms: o Check that students have taken relevant courses in a sequence. o Give students an ungraded pretest that assesses knowledge and skills necessary for the course. o Also rely on students' self-reports about how confident they feel about particular knowledge and their ability to apply it. More information on several forms of pre-assessment. Get a sense of students' motivation in the course. Collect data about: o why students are taking your course o what they expect to get out of it, and o what challenges they anticipate Decide what to do about different/inadequate prior knowledge. Depending on how many students are lacking certain knowledge or skills, you might choose to: o tell them they cannot take the course o tell them how they can bridge the gap on their own o decide to devote one or two classes to a review of important foundational material o defer that to a review session 7. Whet students' appetites for course content Some instructors simply hand out the syllabus and dismiss class figuring that the enrollment has not yet stabilized and it does not make sense to cover material. While there is truth to that argument, the first day of class is a great chance to stimulate interest about the course and to activate relevant prior knowledge students have about the material. Here are some suggestions for activities that orient students to the content: o Directed reading-thinking activity. o Lyons et al. (2003, p. 87) suggest the following exercise:

1. On your own, list everything you can think of that might be in a book entitled [your textbook, or the name of the course if you don't have a textbook]. 2. Get with a partner, share your ideas, and then put the ideas you both generated for step 1 into categories. 3. Give each category a name. 4. Get with another pair and together combine your ideas. Then arrange the categories as a table of contents for this book and write it on the chart paper each group has been given. This activity gets students talking to each other, makes them realize they bring relevant knowledge to bear, and it makes them think about a possible overarching structure for that knowledge. If that structure is appropriate, you can capitalize on that, otherwise this exercise will expose some of the misconceptions students possess, giving you a chance to correct them. The activity typically takes about half an hour. Collect data from the students about issues related to course content. This exercise gives you knowledge about the students and is relevant in social science courses that involve research. A statistics instructor always collects data on the first day and uses the survey and the students' responses to illustrate points about survey sampling. o Have students generate hypothesis about a typical problem in your course. This exercise can be used to foreshadow different positions and camps in your discipline. When appropriate, you can push the students to think about how they would test their hypotheses, getting deeper into methods of inquiry appropriate for the discipline. o Connect course content to current events. Bring in newspaper or magazine clips that relate to your course. Whenever you can connect your field to current events, or pop culture, or student interests, you demonstrate relevance, which increases student motivation. o Common sense inventory. Nilson (2003) describes a "Common Sense Inventory" where students need to determine whether 15 statements related to the course content are true or false (e.g., in a social psychology course, "Suicide is more likely among women than men," or "Over half of all marriages occur between persons who live within 20 blocks of each other").They were as follows: o Breaking the monotony of learning: About this one, Dornyei (2001) highlights the importance of the "motivational flow" when talking about the general rhythm and sequence of events in class and suggests starting it with a warmer, which can be a short stimulating game to set the tone. o Making the tasks more interesting: The author claims that humans are able to produce concentrated effort if they want to. Generating this interest involves a set of characteristics. Most of them can be adaptable; thus, they become challenging for students since they have interesting content, novelty, and intriguing, exotic, fantasy and personal elements; they stimulate competition and humor. Increasing the involvement of the students: It is important to make students active participants .the following tasks require mental or bodily involvement of each participant and creating specific rules and personalized assignments for everybody Diagram 1 shows some of the principles that a teacher must consider when preparing a warm up activity. It emerged as a result of our reflections upon our conceptual framework and the implementation process we designed. The principles contained in this diagram make us realize that warm up activities are not only processes to begin the class, but tools that help us catch students' attention. If you start with an exciting and interesting activity you can be sure the other steps can be developed easily. This warm up must also be short because it is like a preparation for the other class stages. That is why it has to be related with the topic and centered in communicative aspects which could involve activities that emphasize the practice of different skills. In addition, a warm up must be prepared taking into account the students' learning styles. According to Cardenas (2001), "students learn best when they can address knowledge in ways that they trust.Possible words include: bear,bare,piece,peace,not,knot,here,hear,witch,which,flower,flour,would,wood,be,bee,h eal,heel,soul,sole,air,heir,break,brake,mist,missed,read,red,board,bored,buy,bye,pair,pear,male, mail,jeans,genes,not,knot,where,wear,so,sew,sow Mastermind (AKA Bulls & Cows, Jotto, Wordle) 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.In particular, make sure to highlight the learning objectives, the alignment with the assessments

• including the grading criteria - and the instructional strategies, the course policies, and the rationale for the structure and the policies, and the reasons for choosing the textbook or other reading materials.The use of warming up activities implies features as the ones previously described in order to get students' attention, to make them interested in what is going on, to focus on language items and to increase learners' expectations by consciously arranging the conditions in a way that they put the learner in a more positive or optimistic mood.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.Rows signify a more formal environment, while circles or u-shapes imply a more informal atmosphere, with more expectations of student participation.You might want to provide information about the following categories: o caps on enrollment and waitlists o drop-add dates o rules about course sections o safety procedures o other relevant administrative or logistic procedures While this may seem like a lot of information to consider for one class, remember that the first day of class sets the tone for the entire course.A warm up to prepare students for a period of concentration may involve physical movement with activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping, matching pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences or stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants.Assessment: Some assessment activities like games, tasks or projects let students carry out the activity while the teacher is circulating in the classroom monitoring their use of the language, to examine students' progress and achievement.They will learn best through doing, rather than reflecting" . Additionally, Winters (as cited in Cardenas, 2001) suggested that incorporating the "play"element adds meaning to the issue of applying learning styles.The students must guess whose weekend is being describe Provocative statements Write a provocative statement on the board and then put students into small groups to discuss their opinion of it. For example, some drugs should be legalised, Facebook should be banned, Breaking Bad is overrated, one child is enough, organic food is a waste of money, etc.Clothing affects several kinds of judgments people make, including but not limited to, credibility, likability, dominance, kindness, and empathy .Consequently, learning must be stimulating and enjoyable through breaking what might cause monotony in this process and strengthening what makes tasks more interesting, as well as what increases students' involvement.For example: o Jobs where you have to wear a uniform o English football clubs o Sports that are played with a ball o Foods that contain egg o Animals that lay eggs o 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.When you've finished, invite the students (alone or in pairs) to come up with their own rules and let them run Word Association This must be one of the oldest ESL warm-up activities, but sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be surprisingly effective and word games don't get any simpler than word association.You could start it off with relatively mundane stems such as Yesterday I went ..., If I won ..., I have never or something more imaginative like, A wolf howled, the rocket landed ..., Princess Martha kissed ... Write the story on the board and elicit corrections as you go along.Put them on the board (as below) and give students five to ten minutes to figure out what the missing stem is. ________paste ________ ache ________brush Here are some more examples: doorbell, doorman, doorstep |o Consider a quiz on the syllabus.To reinforce the point that understanding expectations is crucial for success in the course some professors require students to take a quiz on the syllabus and get all answers right before they go on with the course content.For example: ?teemotekiltsomuoydluowohw Hangman This popular filler can also be a great way to start a lesson with beginner learners who are still unsure of the alphabet.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.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.Cleary laying out expectations starts to orient students toward the kind of effort, learning, performance and classroom behaviors you expect from them, and it helps them use their time productively.o Icebreakers raise the energy levels and get students comfortable so that they will be ready to focus on the material, especially if you want to foster a collaborative environment where students will have to work in groups or dialogue with each other.o Provitera McGlynn (2001) provide a variety of social icebreakers some of which can be tailored to course content.For instance, in a psychology course on myths about human behavior, the instructor starts with a brainstorming of myths about student behaviors in dorms.Warming up activities can foster motivation and this is, in turn, an essential component when planning warming up activities.Warming up and Attention Warm up activities are designed to attract students' attention, to help them put aside distracting thoughts, and to get them ready to focus individually and as groups on whatever activities that follow.For the purpose of our study, it was the activity used to encourage students' involvement and permeate the development of the whole lesson, so we avoided looking at them as isolated activities.Useful Strategies when Implementing Warming up Activities For the purpose of our project, we considered some specific aspects related to warm up activities which we thought could make students' learning more stimulating.Possible topics for your Tic Tac Toe board might include Sport, Breakfast, Smartphones, Family, Movies, Cats, Rock Music, Soap Operas, Chocolate, etc.Write these words on the board randomly, not in straight lines or columns but higgledy-piggledy and at jaunty angles.These considerations are likely to be particularly relevant for young instructors who are concerned about establishing themselves as authoritative.In addition to the categories above, students are likely trying to determine whether you are a harsh or easy grader, and how flexible you will be with deadlines.ESL and EFL Warm-up Activities : Warm-up activities are essential in the English classroom.The Place of Warm up in the English Lesson When preparing lesson plans for our EFL classes, we must include at least the following parts so that warming up activities can play a clear and meaningful role in our teaching.Kay (1995) describes the stages of a lesson plan in the following way: Warm up: "It is an effective way to help the students begin to think in English and to review previously introduced material. Different types of warm ups help provide variety and interest in the lesson" (p. vi).In this initial stage, we conduct activities to present the new language by providing a context for each situation.The activities must provide opportunities to work on a particular skill or to work integrated skill exercises.The following are the principles of warming up activities: No-preparation ESL Warm-up Activities Here is a list of warm-up activities you can use which don't require any preparation.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.).As a warmer, have students brainstorm words connected to a theme, for example, the seaside, London, marketing, etc.headline, headcount, headlight, headset, headhunter |waterfall, waterbed, waterproof, waterfront, watercolour |These two basic purposes expand into a set of eight concrete objectives: 1.Orchestrate first impressions First impressions can be long-lasting, and they are usually based on a thin slice of behavior.More formal attire communicates expertise and confidence, less formal attire communicates approachability.Greeting the students as they enter the classroom communicates approachability.Franticly arriving right on time or even late communicates disorganization, and so on. 2.Introduce yourself effectively Your introduction should be succinct, but make sure to cover certain key areas.In particular, it is not helpful to say you've never taught the course before, or that it is your least favorite course to teach, or to disclose any irrelevant personal information that can undermine you in the eyes of your students.Clarify learning objectives and your expectations This is probably the most important objective.o Explain your expectations for student behavior (if they are not included in the syllabus) Communicate your commitment to the students' learning experience.Inexperienced instructors sometimes make the mistake of lecturing at the students for a few weeks, then try to have a discussion when the first big unit of the course is finished, only to be surprised at the lack of student participation.This works particularly well in courses where students bring in a lot of misconceptions (e.g., Introductory Physics).Students often come to class tired or with other things on their minds, so it's good to ease them into a class rather than immediately hitting them with a demanding grammar or vocabulary task.With a good warmer you can put your students into English mode - attentive, interested and ready to participate.Motivation and Warm up Activities : First of all, it is necessary to consider the relation between motivation and warm up activities for it is the desired goal to enrich the learning of the subject matter, in our case, language learning.According to Dornyei (2001), teachers need to try and actively generate positive students' attitudes toward learning.He also claims that the key issue in generating interest is to widen the student's appetite; that is, to arouse the students' curiosity and attention and to create an attractive image for the class so that they will get more involved with it and a better learning process will take place.We could say a warming up activity is a motivating starting point that will lead students to become animated to work efficiently in the language class.These kinds of activities might also be called zealous, enthusiastic or suggestive activities.Practice: It involves a wide variety of tasks that ensure the practice of the target language.Use longish seed words such as apologise, dictionary or September.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 question It's always good to start the class with a question.For example: tahw si ruyo seealirt rommey?backpack, backseat, backfire |etc.3.4.5.8.

Objectives of The first class meeting:
The first class meeting should serve at least two basic purposes:
o To clarify all reasonable questions students might have relative to the course objectives, as well
as your expectations for their performance in class. As students leave the first meeting, they
should believe in your competence to teach the course, be able to predict the nature of your
instruction, and know what you will require of them.
o To give you an understanding of who is taking your course and what their expectations are.
These two basic purposes expand into a set of eight concrete objectives:

1. Orchestrate positive first impressions


2. Introduce yourself effectively


3. Clarify learning objectives and expectations


4. Help students learn about each other


5. Set the tone for the course


6. Collect baseline data on students' knowledge and motivation


7. Whet students' appetite for course content


8. Inform students of course requirements


9. Orchestrate first impressions
   First impressions can be long-lasting, and they are usually based on a thin slice of behavior. Before
   you even start teaching, your students will have already made some decisions about you, so it is
   important to understand what those impressions are based on and how to manage them.
   o Your attire. Clothing affects several kinds of judgments people make, including but not
   limited to, credibility, likability, dominance, kindness, and empathy . More formal attire
   communicates expertise and confidence, less formal attire communicates approachability.
   Usually, it is easier to relax a more formal impression into a more relaxed one than the other
   way around. These considerations are likely to be particularly relevant for young instructors
   who are concerned about establishing themselves as authoritative.
   o The physical environment. Students can make decisions about what kind of course yours
   will be by the way the chairs are arranged. Rows signify a more formal environment, while
   circles or u-shapes imply a more informal atmosphere, with more expectations of student
   participation. The words on the board also indicate how interesting the course is likely to be. In
   addition to the course information, consider having a thought-provoking question displayed as
   they arrive.
   o Your use of the few minutes before class. Greeting the students as they enter the classroom
   communicates approachability. Franticly arriving right on time or even late communicates
   disorganization, and so on.


10. Introduce yourself effectively
    Your introduction should be succinct, but make sure to cover certain key areas. These questions
    should help you decide what to say:
    o What characteristics do you want to convey about yourself?
    Among other things, you probably want the students to get a sense of your qualifications for
    teaching the course, how formal/informal you want to be, and how available you will be to the
    students.
    o What will you need to say to convey those characteristics?
    Consider talking about your research interests as they relate to the course, in order to establish
    yourself as an authority, and to make to course more relevant. Talk about the best ways to reach
    you (e.g., phone, email) and your office hour preference (e.g., set hours, open door, make an
    appointment).
    o What do you think students are trying to figure out about you?
    In addition to the categories above, students are likely trying to determine whether you are a
    harsh or easy grader, and how flexible you will be with deadlines. You don’t need to cater to
    their agenda, but you might want to say something about your policies (more on this in the next
    objective).
    o What should you be careful not to say?
    Students do not need to know everything about you. In particular, it is not helpful to say you’ve
    never taught the course before, or that it is your least favorite course to teach, or to disclose any
    irrelevant personal information that can undermine you in the eyes of your students.


11. Clarify learning objectives and your expectations
    This is probably the most important objective. Cleary laying out expectations starts to orient
    students toward the kind of effort, learning, performance and classroom behaviors you expect from
    them, and it helps them use their time productively. It will also help those students who are
    shopping around in deciding whether to take your course or not.
    o Describe the prerequisites so that students will know if they are ready to take your course.
    o Highlight main aspects of the syllabus.If you followed the course design process, you
    should have an effective structure for the course. Communicate that structure to the students so
    they will understand the decisions you made for the course and the reasons why you made them.
    In particular, make sure to highlight the learning objectives, the alignment with the assessments
    – including the grading criteria – and the instructional strategies, the course policies, and the
    rationale for the structure and the policies, and the reasons for choosing the textbook or other
    reading materials.
    o Consider a quiz on the syllabus.To reinforce the point that understanding expectations is
    crucial for success in the course some professors require students to take a quiz on the
    syllabus and get all answers right before they go on with the course content. Blackboard can
    be used for that purpose.
    o Explain your expectations for student behavior (if they are not included in the syllabus)
    Communicate your commitment to the students’ learning experience. Share some
    advice for success in your course (e.g., attendance, participation, keeping up with the readings)
    and let them know you are confident in their success as long as they put in the required effort.


12. Help students learn about each other
    The classroom is a social environment, so it is helpful to start the social dynamics in a productive
    way.
    o Icebreakers raise the energy levels and get students comfortable so that they will be
    ready to focus on the material, especially if you want to foster a collaborative environment
    where students will have to work in groups or dialogue with each other.
    o Make sure that the icebreaker is appropriate for the course.
    o Icebreakers work even better when they allow students to get to know each other in the
    context of the course material.
    o Provitera McGlynn (2001) provide a variety of social icebreakers some of which can be
    tailored to course content.


13. Set the tone for the course
    The way you engage students on the first day sends powerful messages about the level of
    involvement and interaction you expect from them.
    Inexperienced instructors sometimes make the mistake of lecturing at the students for a few weeks,
    then try to have a discussion when the first big unit of the course is finished, only to be surprised
    at the lack of student participation. This is because students have already been socialized to just
    The following strategies will help you set a productive tone:
    o Whatever you plan to do during the semester, do it on the first day. For instance, if you
    plan to use discussions, have students start talking on the first day. If you plan to use groups
    frequently, put students in groups on the first day. If you plan to use extensive writing, have
    some kind of short reflective writing activity. If you want the students to be in charge of their
    own learning, start with an activity where they are the experts, and cannot rely on you for
    information. For instance, in a psychology course on myths about human behavior, the
    instructor starts with a brainstorming of myths about student behaviors in dorms.
    o Consider a “Homework” voluntary-mandatory office hour. The assignment is simply to
    make an appointment with you at a convenient time, find your office and visit you there before
    the next class or two. This gets students to your office, breaks the ice with a short one-on-one
    interaction, and makes it much more likely that the students will come back for help when they
    need it.
    o Establish a culture of feedback. Let students know you are interested in how they
    experience the course and in any suggestions they have. Let them know you will do formal
    early course evaluations, but that they should feel free to give you constructive feedback, even
    anonymously. You might not adopt every suggestion they have but you will listen and consider
    them. This starts to create a partnership in learning.


14. Collect baseline data on students’ knowledge and motivation
    This objective stems directly from the second overarching goal for the first day of class.
    Collect data about baseline knowledge. This can take several forms:
    o Check that students have taken relevant courses in a sequence.
    o Give students an ungraded pretest that assesses knowledge and skills necessary for the
    course.
    o Also rely on students’ self-reports about how confident they feel about particular knowledge
    and their ability to apply it.
    More information on several forms of pre-assessment.
    Get a sense of students’ motivation in the course. Collect data about:
    o why students are taking your course
    o what they expect to get out of it, and
    o what challenges they anticipate
    Decide what to do about different/inadequate prior knowledge. Depending on how many
    students are lacking certain knowledge or skills, you might choose to:
    o tell them they cannot take the course
    o tell them how they can bridge the gap on their own
    o decide to devote one or two classes to a review of important foundational material
    o defer that to a review session


15. Whet students’ appetites for course content
    Some instructors simply hand out the syllabus and dismiss class figuring that the enrollment has
    not yet stabilized and it does not make sense to cover material. While there is truth to that argument,
    the first day of class is a great chance to stimulate interest about the course and to activate relevant
    prior knowledge students have about the material. Here are some suggestions for activities that
    orient students to the content:
    o Directed reading-thinking activity.
    o Lyons et al. (2003, p. 87) suggest the following exercise:


16. On your own, list everything you can think of that might be in a book entitled [your
    textbook, or the name of the course if you don’t have a textbook].


17. Get with a partner, share your ideas, and then put the ideas you both generated for step 1
    into categories.


18. Give each category a name.


19. Get with another pair and together combine your ideas. Then arrange the categories as a
    table of contents for this book and write it on the chart paper each group has been given.
    This activity gets students talking to each other, makes them realize they bring relevant knowledge
    to bear, and it makes them think about a possible overarching structure for that knowledge. If that
    structure is appropriate, you can capitalize on that, otherwise this exercise will expose some of
    the misconceptions students possess, giving you a chance to correct them. The activity typically
    takes about half an hour.
    Collect data from the students about issues related to course content. This exercise
    gives you knowledge about the students and is relevant in social science courses that involve
    research. A statistics instructor always collects data on the first day and uses the survey and the
    students’ responses to illustrate points about survey sampling.
    o Have students generate hypothesis about a typical problem in your course. This
    exercise can be used to foreshadow different positions and camps in your discipline. When
    appropriate, you can push the students to think about how they would test their hypotheses,
    getting deeper into methods of inquiry appropriate for the discipline.
    o Connect course content to current events. Bring in newspaper or magazine clips that relate
    to your course. Whenever you can connect your field to current events, or pop culture, or student
    interests, you demonstrate relevance, which increases student motivation.
    o Common sense inventory. Nilson (2003) describes a “Common Sense Inventory” where
    students need to determine whether 15 statements related to the course content are true or false
    (e.g., in a social psychology course, “Suicide is more likely among women than men,” or “Over
    half of all marriages occur between persons who live within 20 blocks of each other”). After
    paired or small group discussions, you can reveal the right answer. This works particularly well
    in courses where students bring in a lot of misconceptions (e.g., Introductory Physics).


20. Inform students of logistics:
    Students are also looking for answers to questions such as:
    o “Will I be able to get in this course that I really need?”
    o “I have a conflict, is it possible to switch sections?”
    You might want to provide information about the following categories:
    o caps on enrollment and waitlists
    o drop-add dates
    o rules about course sections
    o safety procedures
    o other relevant administrative or logistic procedures
    While this may seem like a lot of information to consider for one class, remember that the first day
    of class sets the tone for the entire course. Time upfront will pay off in the long run.
    ESL and EFL Warm-up Activities :
    Warm-up activities are essential in the English classroom. Students often come to class tired or
    with other things on their minds, so it’s good to ease them into a class rather than immediately
    hitting them with a demanding grammar or vocabulary task. With a good warmer you can put your
    students into English mode – attentive, interested and ready to participate. A warmer can also serve
    to review language from a previous lesson or prime the class for a new topic. These warm up
    activities for adults also serve as emergency activities – useful fillers for when your lesson plan
    runs out or thing run otherwise awry.
    Motivation and Warm up Activities :
    First of all, it is necessary to consider the relation between motivation and warm up activities for
    it is the desired goal to enrich the learning of the subject matter, in our case, language learning.
    Warming up activities can foster motivation and this is, in turn, an essential component when
    planning warming up activities. According to Dornyei (2001), teachers need to try and actively
    generate positive students’ attitudes toward learning. He also claims that the key issue in
    generating interest is to widen the student’s appetite; that is, to arouse the students’ curiosity and
    attention and to create an attractive image for the class so that they will get more involved with it
    and a better learning process will take place.
    Warming up and Attention
    Warm up activities are designed to attract students’ attention, to help them put aside distracting
    thoughts, and to get them ready to focus individually and as groups on whatever activities that
    follow. They will cause people to stop whatever they are doing or thinking and refocus their
    attention. We could say a warming up activity is a motivating starting point that will lead students
    to become animated to work efficiently in the language class. For the purpose of our study, it was
    the activity used to encourage students’ involvement and permeate the development of the whole
    lesson, so we avoided looking at them as isolated activities. These kinds of activities might also
    be called zealous, enthusiastic or suggestive activities.
    The Place of Warm up in the English Lesson When preparing lesson plans for our EFL classes, we
    must include at least the following parts so that warming up activities can play a clear and
    meaningful role in our teaching. Kay (1995) describes the stages of a lesson plan in the following
    way:
    Warm up: “It is an effective way to help the students begin to think in English and to review
    previously introduced material. Different types of warm ups help provide variety and interest in
    the lesson” (p. vi). A warm up to prepare students for a period of concentration may involve
    physical movement with activities that keep them active by standing up, walking, jumping,
    matching pictures with sentences or vocabulary, drawing or writing personal experiences or
    stories, and singing or listening to familiar songs and chants. These are, among others, enjoyable
    and motivating warms ups.
    Presentation: The first part of the presentation often involves pre-teaching to encourage the flow
    of information. In this initial stage, we conduct activities to present the new language by providing
    a context for each situation. Practice: It involves a wide variety of tasks that ensure the practice of
    the target language. These activities can range from controlled to less–controlled and free
    expressions. The activities must provide opportunities to work on a particular skill or to work
    integrated skill exercises.
    Application: The application provides students with hands-on opportunities to use what they have
    learned. This part of the lesson can also be considered part of the practice –particularly less
    controlled and free practice.
    Assessment: Some assessment activities like games, tasks or projects let students carry out the
    activity while the teacher is circulating in the classroom monitoring their use of the language, to
    examine students’ progress and achievement. Also, a written assessment and a self evaluation
    section could be included.
    Useful Strategies when Implementing Warming up Activities For the purpose of our project, we
    considered some specific aspects related to warm up activities which we thought could make
    students’ learning more stimulating. They were as follows:
    • Breaking the monotony of learning:
    About this one, Dornyei (2001) highlights the importance of the “motivational flow” when talking
    about the general rhythm and sequence of events in class and suggests starting it with a warmer,
    which can be a short stimulating game to set the tone.
    • Making the tasks more interesting:
    The author claims that humans are able to produce concentrated effort if they want to. Generating
    this interest involves a set of characteristics. Most of them can be adaptable; thus, they become
    challenging for students since they have interesting content, novelty, and intriguing, exotic, fantasy
    and personal elements; they stimulate competition and humor.
    Increasing the involvement of the students:
    It is important to make students active participants .the following tasks require mental or bodily
    involvement of each participant and creating specific rules and personalized assignments for everybody
    Diagram 1 shows some of the principles that a teacher must consider when preparing a warm up
    activity. It emerged as a result of our reflections upon our conceptual framework and the
    implementation process we designed. The principles contained in this diagram make us realize that
    warm up activities are not only processes to begin the class, but tools that help us catch students’
    attention. If you start with an exciting and interesting activity you can be sure the other steps can
    be developed easily. This warm up must also be short because it is like a preparation for the other
    class stages. That is why it has to be related with the topic and centered in communicative aspects
    which could involve activities that emphasize the practice of different skills. In addition, a warm
    up must be prepared taking into account the students’ learning styles. According to Cárdenas
    (2001), “students learn best when they can address knowledge in ways that they trust. They will
    learn best through doing, rather than reflecting” .
    Additionally, Winters (as cited in Cárdenas, 2001) suggested that incorporating the “play”element
    adds meaning to the issue of applying learning styles. Learning English highly depends on pupils’
    positive attitude toward the class. Consequently, learning must be stimulating and enjoyable
    through breaking what might cause monotony in this process and strengthening what makes tasks
    more interesting, as well as what increases students’ involvement. The use of warming up activities
    implies features as the ones previously described in order to get students’ attention, to make them
    interested in what is going on, to focus on language items and to increase learners’ expectations
    by consciously arranging the conditions in a way that they put the learner in a more positive or
    optimistic mood. The following are the principles of warming up activities:
    No-preparation ESL Warm-up Activities
    Here is a list of warm-up activities you can use which don’t require any preparation. Most of them
    can, of course, also be used as filler activities if you find yourself a few minutes short at the end
    of the lesson.
    Quick questions
    Write a list of two or three questions on the board which introduce the theme of the lesson. For
    example, if you are going to talk about books, you could write: What’s your favourite book? What
    was the last book you read? What kind of books do you prefer? etc. Give the students 5-10 minutes
    to discuss the questions and then have students report back to the class.
    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 question
    It’s always good to start the class with a question. Write a good one on the board but mix up the
    word order, then challenge students to reconstruct the question and then discuss it in pairs or small
    groups. For example: most item you have the ever expensive what’s bought?
    Mixed-up question (anagram variation)
    Alternatively, write a question on the board but this time scramble the letters of each word. For
    example: tahw si ruyo seealirt rommey?
    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
    simple activity to help students recognize letters of 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: whatsyourfavouritecolour? whatdidyoudoattheweekend? whatkindofbooksdoyouliketor
    ead?
    After dictating the letter strings, students should attempt to form the questions and then discuss to repeat
    For more advanced students try dictating the letters backwards and then have the students decode
    the question. This is more challenging because students will find it more difficult to predict the
    next letter and therefore must focus on the letters being dictated. For
    example: ?teemotekiltsomuoydluowohw
    Hangman
    This popular filler can also be a great way to start a lesson with beginner learners who are still
    unsure of the alphabet. Just put a recently learned word on the board and let the students take it in
    turns to guess a letter.
    Word ladders
    In this activity, a word must be transformed step by step into a target word. To illustrate the idea,
    write the word run on the board and explain that the target word is fit. For each turn, only one letter
    can be changed. See if the class can find a valid sequence together. Some possible sequences are:
    Students will need access to a dictionary in order to check if their words are valid. If you want to
    find possible word pairs, there is a site with a handy word ladder generator. Put students in pairs
    and have them create their own word ladders to test their classmates with.
    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.
    What’s the missing word?
    Find a group of compound words or collocations which share a common word. For
    example, bedroom, bathroom, living room, classroom, showroom, etc. Give students one of the
    word/collocation parts, such as bed and have them guess the missing part, add to the list
    writing bath, living, class, etc., until they successfully guess the word. Here are some more
    examples:
    • ear, boxing, diamond, finger, wedding (ring)
    • tea, soup, table, dessert (spoon)
    • kitchen, tea, bath, beach (towel)
    • green, light, ware, boat, work, wife (house)
    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.
    Things to do with a potato
    One of many brilliantly simple warm up ideas from one of my favourite teaching books. 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.
    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? If you like this
    activity try doing a guess the sound quiz.
    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. 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.
    Homophone Quiz
    Say a word from a list of homophones and challenge students to write both (or more) forms of the
    word. Possible words
    include: bear,bare,piece,peace,not,knot,here,hear,witch,which,flower,flour,would,wood,be,bee,h
    eal,heel,soul,sole,air,heir,break,brake,mist,missed,read,red,board,bored,buy,bye,pair,pear,male,
    mail,jeans,genes,not,knot,where,wear,so,sew,sow
    Mastermind (AKA Bulls & Cows, Jotto, Wordle)
    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. And so on.
    Continue adding items to your picnic list until a student correctly guesses the rule (the choices
    don’t have to make sense within the picnic scenario e.g. love, information, air ). When you’ve
    finished, invite the students (alone or in pairs) to come up with their own rules and let them run
    Word Association
    This must be one of the oldest ESL warm-up activities, but 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 …
    Tell a story
    This is another circle game. Going around the class students take it in turns to add three words to
    your story stem. You could start it off with relatively mundane stems such as Yesterday I went …,
    If I won …, I have never or something more imaginative like, A wolf howled, the rocket landed …,
    Princess Martha kissed … Write the story on the board and elicit corrections as you go along.
    Party Trick
    This is a great way to practise can & can’t. Ask the class to think of one thing they can do which
    nobody else in the class can do. For example a student could ask the class, can you count to ten in
    Chinese? You could turn it into a knock-out competition – playing until there is one person left
    standing.
    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.
    Free Speaking Tic Tac Toe
    Similar to the long-running 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. Possible topics for your Tic Tac Toe board might include Sport, Breakfast,
    Smartphones, Family, Movies, Cats, Rock Music, Soap Operas, Chocolate, etc.
    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! BusinessEnglishResources.com..
    Spontaneous Scatter Sheet
    Scatter Sheets are 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 criterion. For example by age,
    alphabetical order of first name or surname, the number of shoes owned, etc.
    Whose weekend?
    Give each student a slip of paper and ask each student to write down three things they did at the
    weekend. Collect up the slips of paper and randomly read each one out. The students must guess
    whose weekend is being describe
    Provocative statements
    Write a provocative statement on the board and then put students into small groups to discuss their
    opinion of it. For example, some drugs should be legalised, Facebook should be banned, Breaking
    Bad is overrated, one child is enough, organic food is a waste of money, etc. Have students report
    back to the class. You could make a list of arguments for and against the thesis.
    Draw the kitchen
    I often use this when I work in-company. Ask the students to think of a room or area which they
    are all quite familiar with and then have them guide you as you try to draw a plan of the room on
    the board. This is great for practising there is and there are as well as prepositions of place and
    furnishing vocabulary.
    The Categories Game
    I tend to use this as a filler rather than a warmer. Put students into teams and write on the board
    six vocabulary categories. Now give them a letter of the alphabet and the teams must race to think
    of a word beginning with that letter for each category. Writing stops when the first team
    yells finished! and points are given for each correct answer. See The Categories Game post for a
    more detailed explanation as well as a list of possible categories.
    Compound word quiz
    This is a fun little quiz you can do at the beginning of a lesson to get your learner’s brains buzzing.
    Choose five groups of three compound words with the same stem and write them on the board
    without their stem. For example paste, ache, brush (the stem is tooth) or ball, man, board (the stem
    is snow). Put them on the board (as below) and give students five to ten minutes to figure out what
    the missing stem is.
    ________paste
    ________ ache
    ________brush
    Here are some more examples:
    doorbell, doorman, doorstep | headline, headcount, headlight, headset, headhunter | backpack,
    backseat, backfire | timeline, timetable, timesaver | blackbird, blacklist, blackout | lighthouse,
    lightbulb, lightweight | daydream, daylight, daytime | nightlife, nightclub, nighttime,
    nightmare | sunburn, sunset, sunshine, sunrise | waterfall, waterbed, waterproof, waterfront,
    watercolour | lifeboat, lifetime, lifeguard | paperback, paperwork, paperweight, paperboy/girl