A quick engaging warm-up activity is a great way to engage students in either a fun ice-breaker or target specific essential skills. From a “Would You Rather” question to a phonics micro-lesson, incorporating a targeted focus for just a few minutes each day can make a huge impact on students’ language and literacy development.
Here are 6 tried and true favorite ESL warm up activities from my classroom.
Activities to Build Oral Language Skills
Would You Rather Question Prompts
This a favorite for my students. I project one slide at the beginning of class to get students talking. Language supports such as hand signals and sentence frames make this warm-up activity accessible to ALL students regardless of English proficiency level.
The images are engaging and the activity is short, which helps get my students in a learning mindset just prior to our lesson of the day.
For groups that I push-in to support, I have the prompts printed on cardstock and stored in a photo box for easy traveling.
Bonus: This activity also makes for an easy sub plan activity. Turn it into a written response for additional practice.
This resource is a one that would benefit any ELD classroom.
Four Corners
Incorporating a fun factor keeps students motivated and engaged, and this activity is one that my students keep asking for.
Typically with 4 Corners, students are presented with a question and 4 possible answer choices. The room is assigned 4 designated spots numbered 1-4. It could be corners of the room, or other places around the room. Then students move to the spot that corresponds with their answer choice. Once there, students discuss their reasoning with the other group members.
This visual resource includes differentiated slides to provide ample question choices to suit your class needs: level 1 blue slides, level 2 yellow slides and level 3 green slides.
For my small instructional space, I don’t have students physically move to a corner of the room, but rather hold up 1, 2, 3 or 4 fingers to share their choice. We then look around the table to see who might have chosen the same number choice. Then students explain the reasoning for their choice.
Sentence frames and modeling help support beginning English learners. It’s a really great way to get to know students and build community.
Activities to Build Literacy Skills
Phonological Awareness & Phonics
This is a great warm-up activity for mixed level beginner students. For example, some students might be learning letter names and sounds, while others know letter names and sounds but need support with short and long vowels and syllabication.
Activities target learning letter names, along with distinguishing, or isolating, sounds in English. Students will then use sounds to blend, decode and write words. I spend about 5-7 minutes at the beginning of each small group session targeting these essential foundational literacy skills using 1 to 2 slides.
This resource is perfect for upper elementary MLs who lack foundational literacy skills in their native language, or simply need additional practice with short and/or long vowels.
I create a short vowels booklet, or long vowels booklet depending on what my students need, then at the start of each class, we turn to the next word in our booklet and work through the slide together.
Thirty short vowel slides and 30 long vowel slides provide plenty of phonological awareness and phonics warm-up practice throughout the year.
Irregular Sight Words
This activity builds sight words, along with reading and writing skills. This is an area most students could benefit from additional practice; and with 5 leveled sets to choose from, it makes for an effective and targeted warm-up activity.
After initially going through the main slide deck to practice reading the words in context, and then playing a fun “fast words” game at the end of the slide deck, each subsequent small group session begins with a 5 minute warm-up.
With this activity, students complete one page in their sight word booklet, with teacher support as needed. I like to use a document camera for modeling.
There are 20 sight words in a booklet, which means 20 days of warm-up activities! When students finish the booklet, I either introduce the next set of 20 sight words, or I change it up with a new warm-up activity. Students like and need consistency, but they also need change when it’s time.
I have found that keeping a warm-up activity consistent, builds confidence and skills. Students know what to expect and eventually require much less modeling or support; and through their success with each activity, their confidence grows.
Multiple Meaning Words
I do like to change up the activity, so after about a month I’ll introduce a new one, always keeping in mind what my students need. Multiple meaning words is often an area English learners benefit from explicit instruction and extra practice.
With this warm-up activity, a new pair of multiple meaning words is introduced, usually by displaying a mini-poster and using the words in familiar sentences.
Using images and sample sentences support students in finding the context clues needed to identify word meanings.
In my classroom, this typically that looks like sentences written on chart paper and students matching picture cards with the correct sentence based on it’s meaning.
A quick half page activity for students to illustrate, identify and use multiple meaning words provides an effective 5-10 minute warm-up activity.
I prefer teaching three word pairs a week, and after two weeks assessing understanding.
This resource includes 36 multiple meaning word sets and activity pages, plus posters, word cards and 6 quizzes. It’s fun, engaging and provides 36 or more days of warm-up activities that build vocabulary and language comprehension skills.
Restate the Question
This is another activity my students ask to do more of. Restating the question is a necessary skill students need in both oral and written language, so incorporating it as a quick warm-up (or cool-down) activity is a way to support and build the skills our students need.
I print the cards out on cardstock and keep them in a 4×6 storage box in a place that’s easily accessible. This way, when we have a few minutes to spare at the end of a class, this makes for a fun cool-down activity. For oral language, I simply go around the table reading a question card to each student, having them respond back by restating the question first. There are a ton of cards, so plenty questions to choose from.
For writing practice, I use my document camera to project a question, then students write a short response in their notebooks. I usually designate a section the notebook for “Warm-Up” activities, so once students learn the routine, they know exactly where to turn in their notebook to give their response. After a few minutes, students share out their written responses.
Why are Warm-Up Routines Important?
Having a warm-up routine helps to get students in a learning mindset. Whether your lesson is first thing in the morning, after lunch or recess, or at the end of the school day, a quick and meaningful activity will engage the brain and set your lesson up for success.
A routine also helps to maintain consistency, which is beneficial especially for emerging multilingual learners. Learning the procedures and expectations of the activity removes the need for students to question or wonder how to do something, affording them time to focus solely on the learning task at hand.
Lastly, it’s a great way to target specific skills that students need when we may have a limited amount of time with them. A few minutes each day can make a huge impact on their overall language development progress.
Do you have a favorite warm-up activity in your classroom? I’d love to hear about it.
Happy teaching,
Warm-Up Activities Found in this Post:
