Job Discussion Forums

[lucy lace]

Okay, so, on Friday I finished my first stint teaching, three weeks as a level 5 substitute. The school I worked for is incredibly disorganized and there doesn't seem to be much communication between the head of school and the teachers, or between teachers, for that matter. I was slightly and kindly snubbed when I asked the other teachers for warm-up ideas. Fair enough - I spent many hours reading indexes and flipping through books. Now I have been asked to do yet another substituting job for them, a mere one class - but the teacher did no prep for me, it's a four hour class, it's the first class of a new session, and I just found out about it. (It's 6pm on Sunday night. The class starts tomorrow at 8:30am.)

I need a warm-up! My Celta course didn't really cover good warm-ups, or good warm-up resources. I have exhausted my meager supply, and the resource room at my school doesn't have a good source. I have surfed the teacher forum on this website, but nothing jumps out at me, as my class is not huge, nor made up of children (I probably'll have five-seven students, age 20-40, multilingual, intermediate). Plus, these students will most likely know each other, will definately know me (they'll have graduated from the class I just taught) with the exception of maybe one, maybe two new students.

Any good warm-ups? Games? I'm so new I smell like new car.

Thanks thanks thanks!

[Jizzo T. Clown]

One that I did in China is called "Have you ever?"

Type up a list of questions (at least the same number of questions as students, probably in the neighborhood of 20) requiring them to use the perfect tense, ex:

Have you ever....

Eaten dog?

Been to Switzerland?

Hit your wife?

etc...

Have them ask everyone in class at least one question, then follow up with a class discussion, ex:

Sahib has eaten dog.

Yuki has been to Swizterland.

Pedro has hit his wife.

etc...

A variation on this is called "Find someone who..."

That should kill about 20 minutes, anyway.

[El Llama]

With a new class I often play what I call "The Best Liar." It lets you have a quick look at the ability of your students, works as a getting-to-know-you exercise and is a bit of fun.

Write 5 sentences about yourself on the board but only make some of them true and tell lies for the others. I usually make the last sentence a silly, obvious lie (e.g. "My favourite food is monkey brains"). Students guess which ones are true.

Now have the students do the same: 5 sentences, some true, some false.

Go round the class and have them read out their sentences. The rest of the class must guess when the students are lying. You can also ask follow-up questions to promote discussion and guage spoken ability.

Award one student the award of Best Liar in the class. (Light-heartedly, of course)

Takes about 20 - 30 minutes, depending on class size.

[eslHQ]

well this is too late to help the original poster but it may help someone in the future.

i have 1 activity that i almost always use the first day of class. it's a great way to get to know your students and for them to get to know you.

First, i write 10 things about myself on the board. I write some easy ones like: 'Eric', '30', 'rock climbing', etc... And then i write some more obscure ones like: ,'Sage', 'Yes', '8/12/2005', etc...

Then i get the students to guess the question to the answer that is on the board. So they would ask:
whats your name?
how old are you?
whats your hobby?
whats your dog's name?
are you married?
when did you get married?

after they have figured out the question for each answer, it's their turn. they write down 3-5 things about themselves that maybe their classmates don't know. then they come up to the front of the class, i write their info on the board and the class guesses about the student.

its a great activity because you really get to know a lot about your students and they learn a bit about you. plus, its a lot of fun!

eric

[dajiang]

you could have them choose an item they think is the most special. They should have the item with them and put it on a central table. Then they can explain where they got it from, why they chose it, and so they'll get to know more of each other, as will you get to know them better.
You can join in the activity as well of course.

You could also have the items placed in a box anonymously and then put them all on the central table. Then the ss can try and guess who they're from, and perhaps even guess it's revelance.

Something similar is to write down some numbers and words that are of some relevance in your life. ('19': age when you left your parent's home, 'red': favourite colour, '9768': number of days old, etc...)
Then the ss can think about and guess what they think these numbers mean. Could do that in pairs too.

You can also get pictures from your past of which it is not immediately clear where they're taken, and what you were doing there. Give pairs a picture and have them try and guess what you were doing there, and where it was. Then see who's closest. It's a good way to introduce yourself to the students.

Of course don't focus too much on yourself , and other activities can be found on my humble weblog: http://eslmaniac.web-log.nl/

Dajiang

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

There are some really good ideas here.

Thanks for sharing them !