3Main Part: a brief history of language teaching

Organize Yourselves
- This is a great activity for younger students and foreign
language class students. It’s also effective to use at the beginning of the year when
students are still getting to know each other. Students arrange themselves based on
similar qualities, says the team at VIP Kid. You can give students one or multiple
criteria to follow, such as names, where the students would line themselves up
alphabetically.
Picture Warm-Up
- This is another activity for younger students and foreign
language classes, although it can also help students warm up their creative writing
skills. It involves showing students a picture and giving them 30 seconds to describe
what they see. “Make sure it has lots of little details in it, preferably one where you
could spend a good minute or so describing every last detail to your friend,” suggests
teacher Ivan Berezowski. Then, take the picture down and tell the students to
describe what they saw to their partner. After that, split the class into two teams and
have one student from each team write as many things as they saw in 30 seconds.
Points are awarded for every correct detail.

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Pick a Side

- For a deeper, more thoughtful warm-up appropriate for high
school students, consider picking a side. During this activity, teachers choose a
debate question or political issue and ask students to consider their stance and pick
a side, explains the team at Teaching Channel. It’s best to choose issues with two
clear sides. Then, students on each side will take turns making an argument as to
why they hold that stance and how it relates to the issue.
Study Guide
- Time at the beginning of class can be used to create a study
guide, which warms students up while also helping them later on. Teacher Jason
Deehan says he uses questions from previous classes as a form of review, especially
those covered a few weeks ago and may have since been forgotten. “The students
are trained to write down the questions and then answer them completely. These
questions and answers will be returned to the students later and form part of their
study guide for summative assessments.” So, skipping questions or writing
incomplete answers will hurt students in the long run, Deehan adds [16.p.107].
Around the World
- Math warm-ups are helpful for switching from a different
subject into math. Early childhood educator Holly Mitchell suggests a game called
“Around the World.” In it, students sit in a circle, with one student standing behind
a class member. The teacher asks a math question and the student who answers
correctly first moves around to the next student in the circle. This is a lighthearted
warm-up that gets students into the right frame of mind before their math lesson