Hello there! Hope you’re all doing well. I know some of you must have received you arrêté de nomination for the assistant de langues en France program. If you haven’t yet received it, start writing to your school, it’s a busy period because vacations are approaching and the admin must be caught up with other things. Do not hesitate to shoot a polite email to them. Il ne faut pas oublier vos formules de politesse ! 😉 Today, I thought of sharing some ideas about quick ESL warm-up activities you can do with your groups.

Right from the first time I started teaching English in France, I had told the teacher I was working with that I would like to take my group to a separate room, if possible. I’ve always had great colleagues so they agreed (except for a few who wanted to see what I did with my batch so I was, kind of, forced to be with them in the same class). Having a space for myself allowed me to prepare and arrange it the way I wanted. (Note: if a teacher lets you use his/her classroom, make sure you leave the class in the same condition! No changes at all. )

I am going to list-out some self-made/modified,  warm-up/ice-breaker/quick ESL activities here which you may use for your class. If I already mentioned one of these in my previous posts, sorry! Just read it again? These activities work for one-on-one sessions, groups, middle-school, as well as high-schools. These are just warm-up activities, feel free to connect these to your main lesson or simply modify them to add your own signature!

Hide and Ask

This is a very common ESL activity and I am sure you must have heard of this one before. Enter the class with something hidden inside your fist.  Or simply call one of the students and give that “something” secretly to him, and ask him to hide it. The entire class then asks questions and the person hiding the thing would tell if they are correct. They cannot call out object names , they can only ask questions, and give-out the correct answer only when they are sure of it.

Hide. Draw. Check

It’s good to have a portable whiteboard for this purpose. By portable, I mean those small handy whiteboards you can easily move around. Ask your colleagues, they’d know for sure. Tell students to take out a notebook and a pen. Tell them to follow your instructions.

Say it loud and clear:

Draw a circle. Outside the circle, on the left, draw a small rectangle. At the center of the rectangle, draw a dot. Blah blah.. and once you’re done, match your design with that of your students’. Once they’ve understood, you can call one of the students to take your place.

Board-Race : 

This one is just okay, but works sometime. I heard about it from a colleague during an American camp. So well, all you need to do is divide the whiteboard in two sections. Write the theme of the day vertically on the board (on both the sections), like :
I
N
D
I
A

Call out two students and tell them to write as many words ( adjectives/nouns/animals : you can use this one to review any vocabulary you like) as they can with one of the letters (set a time limit). Then, call two more, so on and so forth. Turn it into a competition, or keep it easy, it’ll help your students brush up their vocabulary and come-up with different words. Help them with hints if necessary.

Please feel free to post your favorite quick ESL activities that you use as ice breakers or otherwise? Do follow me on instagram : prettymorningsinfrance to keep yourself updated about my french adventures, and more !
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Stay safe and bisous till you hear from me next!