Energizing Online English Group Classes - Warm up Game

[TatjanaG]

Activity Time

0 - 5 minutes

Introduction/Overview

During these strange quarantine times, you might have found yourself in a situation where you have to teach online classes to groups of students. A common misconception about online classes is that they are somehow more boring or static than traditional ones. This game shows how we can easily energize our online classes. This game can be used as a joyful opening of any online English group class because it's fun and active. It can be especially used as a warm up for lessons focused on teaching colors or action verbs. In this activity/game children will practice responding with specific body movements to the color cues the teacher gives. The goal of the game is that students move their bodies accurately to the cues and think fast.

What you need
Materials: sticks or pens in 4 different colors.

Procedure

Steps: Teacher tells the students they will play the Colors game. Teachers shows the students a pen (or a stick) and tells (and shows) everyone: "When you see red - stand up." Students follow. Then the teacher gives instructions for other colors: Black - sit down Yellow - wave and say "hello" Green - high five the student next to you Note: the teacher can be very imaginative and funny with assigning different movements (for example, scratch your head, shrug your shoulders and say 'huh?'). Students age 6+ can easily follow the game. With students older than 10, try using 5 sticks, i.e. commands. A nice thing about this game is that you can change the body movements you assign as much as you like so the students won't get bored with the game after a few classes. And the game starts: the teachers shows the first color and asks the students to do the assigned movement. The teacher repeats this action for other colors. The teacher first shows the colors slowly until students can remember the movements for each color. Faster tempo: the teacher starts giving color cues faster and faster until the students get excited and start laughing because they end up looking and feeling funny. It is a good idea to try and confuse the students by alternating between 2 movements fast (for example, by alternating between the red and black cue, the students have to stand up and sit down many times.) When they finish, the teacher congratulates everyone for being so quick with their bodies and minds. You can see an example of the activity in the video preview below.

Preview
View attachment Warm up game for English online classes.mov​