As with most activities we take part in, a good warm up is really important to make sure we perform the best we can.
I have tried to come up with lots of different warm-up activities recently to add a little variety to lessons.
Here is a list with a quick explanation of each:
- A-Z race - Simply encourage the student(s) to choose a topic it could be fruits & vegetables or in an olympic year sports and then try to think of item for each letter of the alphabet.
- Picture descriptor - Tutor and the student each draw a picture of their choice (depending on the level of the student make it more or less difficult) and keep the results of which to themselves. Each person then take it in turns to describe little by little what exactly is in their picture. Tutor can set the tone here by encouraging students to be as specific as possible (e.g. "where abouts is the tree on the page" or "how many branches".
- Word deconstuctor/reconstructor - The tutor takes a relevant larger word (i've used words like multiligual/bilingual before) and encourages the student to see exactly how many smaller words the make (I let students move letters around and use them more than once).
- Word description - tutor and student think of three or four words each and then describe each word to the other person. Again the tutor can make activity more diffcult by their own choices, replies and the questions they ask.
