The beginning of your online English as a second language (ESL) class is the best time to set the tone. Research shows that effective warm up activities can help students to perform better during the class and support student engagement and motivation for learning. They can also provide a chance for students to be creative and problem-solve right at the start of class.
While there are lots of great warm up ideas that work well in the physical classroom, not all of them translate well to online classes.
So, what are some 5-minute warm up activities for your online classroom?
In this guide you’ll find a range of fun, low-preparation warm up activities – for kids, teens and adult learners alike.
5-minute online warm up games for kids
Young learners can find switching to English more challenging than older learners. That makes it really important to start off your online class on a fun note.
So here are some low preparation warm up ideas for kids that will help you do just that:
Guess the noise
This is a fun online warm up for young learners, who have limited vocabulary skills.The objective is for the students to guess what’s making a noise. With a little adaptation, it can work equally as well in one-to-one classes and group lessons.
In group lessons, the first child to guess the answer correctly wins a point. In one-to-one classes, the child has to guess as many noises as he or she can in one minute.
How to prepare:
Using YouTube, Spotify, or other multimedia streaming service, queue up a number of sounds that you students should be familiar with and know the names of in English (e.g. car horn, cow, airplane, etc.).
As a tip, search for “____ sound effect” and you’ll find what you are looking for very quickly.
How to play:
- Tell students that they are going to hear a noise. Play the audio tracks one at a time. Your students should raise their hand if they think they know what it is. Play the track again if they are all unsure.
- Choose the student who raised their hand first and let them guess the noise in English. If they are correct, they win a point. If they are incorrect, choose the next fastest student.
- Tally up the scores at the end and the student with the most points wins.
An optional activity
After each noise, show a picture of what makes the noise. Very young children might like to mime being the animal or object in the picture. It’s a little silly and helps burn off some energy in the beginning of the lesson.
Kim’s Game
Every English teacher knows that young learners love memory games. Beyond enjoyment, memory games can bring real benefits to children. For instance, these games show the importance of concentration and attention to detail and help practice short term memory recall. But some games translate better to online teaching than others.
Kim’s game is a good example of an online ESL warmer. Played by Scouts and Guides, it’s a fun memory game.
How to prepare
- Simply choose a selection of objects to use in the game. Ideally, students should be familiar with the names of the objects in English.
- These objects could be toys, shapes, or household objects. Really, you are only limited by what you have available.
How to play
- Put the objects on a table in front of you, in full view of the camera and your students.
- Give your students a moment to look at the selection and ask any questions (for example, if they don’t know the name of one of the objects).
- Turn your camera off and remove one or two of the objects.
- Turn your camera back on. Can your students identify which objects you’ve removed?
- Students win points for every correct answer.
Kim’s game works equally well in groups as in one-to-one lessons. You can also use it to review vocabulary groups, like food, or shapes, and introduce new topics as well.
Spot the Difference
This fun variation on Kim’s game only takes 5 minutes and doesn’t require any preparation. It requires your students to focus and use their powers of observation.
- Start off your online class saying hello and asking about your student’s day.
- During the chat, ask your students to pay close attention to their screen. They should take notice of what you’re wearing and what is behind you.
- Turn off your cameras for thirty seconds. In this time, change something about yourself or your setting. You could change your sweater, close the curtains, move a plant, put on a necklace – or something else!
- Turn the camera back on and challenge your students to spot the difference!
- If students enjoy the game, they can take turns doing the same.
If you’re finding this article helpful, you might also like to learn more about teaching English to kids online.
Regain focus with a song
Music has a powerful effect on children’s brains. Studies have found that nursery rhymes and songs aid babies and toddlers’ language development.
When it comes to children who are learning a second language, songs can expose them to new words. Songs also demonstrate good pronunciation and intonation, and help learners to recall vocabulary.
You can use songs as warm up activities or as ways to break up the lesson and get a class back on track. Here are some popular choices for young learner classes:
- If you’re happy and you know it: Vocabulary related to emotions and body actions
- Ten green bottles: A counting song
- Old MacDonald had a farm: Vocabulary related to animals
- Five little monkeys: A counting song
- Miss Polly had a dolly: A rhyming song
- Heads, shoulders, knees and toes: Vocabulary related to the body
Pro tip: If you can, make time to create little props or use toys to mime along to the lyrics. For example, if you have some little plastic farm animals, Old MacDonald can really come alive!
Fun ESL warm up activities for adults and teens
Good warm up activities are really important for getting your learners in the zone. These ESL warm up activities for adults and teens take five minutes (or less!) and are sure to be a hit with your students.
Guess who or guess what
This quick warmer is suitable for teens or adults at a B1 level of English or above. It can be adapted easily for group classes or one-to-ones. The aim is to guess who did what activity over the week.
Group classes
- Using the private chat function, have each student in the class send you one sentence explaining something interesting they did during the week.
- Next, paste the responses into the chat box one by one (without the names of the students who sent them), so all the students can read them.
- Now students have to play detective, guessing who did what.
- They may only ask questions that require a yes/no answer
- Correct guesses win a point, incorrect answers lose a point!
- The winner is the student with the most points.
One-to-one classes or two-person groups
- In one or two person classes, have students write three sentences each; one thing they did and two things they didn’t do. As the teacher, you should also take part.
- Take it in turns to try and guess the correct answers.
- As above, they may only ask questions that require a yes/no answer
- Correct guesses win a point, incorrect answers lose a point!
A quickfire quiz
Game-based warm ups are a great way to connect with students and get them alert, energized and ready to learn. In fact, using games in the classroom can improve your students’ learning by up to 23%, according to UNICEF.
A quickfire quiz is a great way to review vocabulary or language concepts from recent classes, or even to find out how much your student knows about the next topic coming up.
There are so many options to create a quickfire quiz to start off your class, and Kahoot and Quizlet are two of the most popular:
- Kahoot is a cloud-based quiz platform where people can create their own quizzes. It is often used by teachers for foreign language learning. In a literature review, it was found to have a significant impact on student learning performance, motivation, and attitude.
- Quizlet is another learning platform where you can create quizzes, flashcards and study sets. According to their data, 90% of students who use Quizlet report receiving higher grades as a result, so by introducing your learners to Quizlet, you’ll be setting them up for success.
Go exploring
GeoGuessr is a fun, free online game where students can explore the world. It uses the street view function on Google Maps, and places the viewer in a random place in the world. The aim is to look around you and try to work out where you are. The closer your guess is to the correct location, the more points you win.
It’s a fun way to introduce lots of different language concepts and topics, such as directions, modal verbs of speculation, and descriptive language for towns and cities.
What’s more, it will hone your students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills, tools that will certainly help them in learning English!
While there’s no preparation required, do note that this game asks the player to sign up beforehand.
How to play
- Students have to work fast to solve the problem and click where they think they might be on the map.
- The closer they get, the more points they get.
Word ladder
This brain teaser is a stimulating way to start off your class and requires very little preparation.
How to play
- Give your student two words: the starter word, and the destination word. Both must have the same number of letters. (e.g. live and cake).
- Then, they have to change the word a letter at a time, until they’ve reached the destination word.
- The catch? Every time they change a letter, it still has to be a valid English word. Here’s an example:
LIVE – LOVE – LOSE – LOST – COST – CAST – CASE – CAKE
It will hone your student’s problem-solving skills and get them in the zone for learning!
Read more tips on teaching online in our article on how to prepare and teach online classes.
Final words
When you teach online, it can be hard to read the room and gauge your student’s energy, or guess the kind of day they’ve had. But a good warm up activity can provide a reset button for both of you.
With the help of these different warm up activities for ESL classes, your class will get off to a flying start, whether your student is seven years old or seventy.
Once your student is “in the zone” – relaxed, alert and focused – they’ll be so much more ready to learn and progress faster.
If you’re interested in teaching English online to young learners, teens or adults, check out our selection of online English tutoring jobs on Preply.
