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Do you usually start your ESL lessons by diving right into grammar drills, textbooks, and new vocabulary? Or do you use ESL warm-up activities at the beginning of each class? Warm-up activities for English lessons are an important teaching tool and often make or break a lesson. With that in mind, we will give you some easy warm-ups you can incorporate into your virtual or physical classroom!
If you’re new to teaching, you’ll want to get initial training and qualification with a TEFL certificate. You can explore our online TEFL courses to get started!
Why are ESL warm-up activities important?
They get students into learning mode
When you start a language lesson, you should first get your students into the right mindset. This approach applies to all ages and levels. ESL warm-up activities for adults may differ a little from ESL games and activities for kids and teens, but they carry the same importance.
Until students are focused, they are not going to retain new information. Warm-ups provide a way to refocus students’ attention. For example, warm-ups can help if your students are tired from school or work, are stressed or preoccupied with personal problems, or come to class either overly excited or tired.
They can provide a mental break
ESL warm-up games, activities and icebreakers can also work in the middle of the lesson if your students need a break. If you notice that students are no longer paying attention, are bored or tired, or need a respite from difficult content, pull out a warm-up activity in the middle of class to get things back on track!
Need some last-minute help? Try these planning tips and free lçesson plans.
They are engaging
Warm-ups are designed to grab students’ attention and motivate them to participate. ESL warm-up activities for online classes are especially important because you need to keep your students engaged in front of their computer screens for quite some time. Throwing in some quick and easy ESL games for teaching online every once in a while does just the trick.
Warm-ups help students focus, reset, and participate from the start. You set the tone for the lesson when you use a quick activity that meets your learners where they are. You protect your lesson flow when you use warm-ups as tools rather than gimmicks.
Here’s an example of a teacher using the collaborative whiteboard function of an online teaching platform to engage students in a quick, fun activity:
What makes a good warm-up activity?
Effective warm-up activities for teaching English should be:
A good warm-up supports your lesson goal and respects your students’ energy and attention. You keep learners confident when you use familiar language and clear instructions. You save time and reduce friction when you choose a task that starts fast and stays focused.
ESL warm-up activities for kids
Here are five original ESL warm-up activities for young learners that respect children’s need to move their bodies frequently and express themselves creatively.
1. Strike a pose
This is a simple ESL warm-up activity that includes a lot of movement. You can use it when your students enter the physical or virtual classroom for the first time. They won’t know each other yet, so starting the lesson by introducing each other with their names is a good idea.
Have your students stand in a circle so that they can see each other. Give them a minute to come up with a gesture or pose that represents them. Then, the first student steps forward and says, “My name is [insert name],” accompanied by the gesture or pose that he or she came up with. Now, everybody repeats the student’s name and gesture. Next, student B steps forward and says his or her name with a gesture or pose. Now, everybody repeats student A’s and student B’s names and gestures. Next is student C. Continue until everybody has said their name, and all students can remember all of the names and gestures in one round.
2. Charades
Students take turns acting out a word provided by you while their classmates try to guess what it is. This activity is a good opportunity to review vocabulary from a previous lesson or to try to introduce a new word. Young learners become really immersed in this activity, and they usually try very hard to act out the word’s meaning.
Need help teaching vocabulary? Boost your lessons with these essential tips.
3. Question time
Have all students stand up, and ask them a question – feel free to get creative. You could ask anything (How is the weather? What time is it? Which superhero wears the colors red and blue? What did I have for breakfast today? etc.). The student who raises his or her hand first gets a chance to answer. If the answer is wrong, the next student to raise their hand gets a chance. If the answer is right, that student gets to sit down. The goal is not to be the last student standing!
4. We are fun, fantastic friends!
This is a great team-building ESL warm-up activity that can be played in pairs or groups.
Depending on the class size, divide the students into pairs or groups. For online platforms that don’t allow breakout groups, students can work individually. Assign each group or person a letter (and maybe don’t use difficult letters such as X or Q). They now have to find two adjectives and a noun with that starting letter to describe themselves. When everybody is ready, each group introduces themselves in front of the class.
Students usually come up with funny, original ideas that make everybody laugh. You will hear things like “We are amazing, active animals,” “We are cool, cheerful classmates,” or “We are beautiful, bouncy balloons.”
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Pro Tip: You can easily adjust the difficulty of this warm-up to the level of your students by changing the number of adjectives that they have to use.
5. All about me
Break students into pairs and tell them that they have one minute to talk about themselves. They can choose what they want to discuss, such as something they like, where they live, their birthday, how old they are, their hobbies, and so on. When the time is up, their partner talks about themselves. After two minutes, switch the pairs and start over. Continue swapping partners each round until everyone has talked with every classmate.
If you are teaching English online and cannot split students into pairs, simply give each student one minute to address the whole class.
Kids learn better when you give them structure and movement from the start. You build classroom trust when you use warm-ups that feel playful but stay purposeful. You set up stronger lessons when you let these activities feed into your target language.
6. Mystery bag
Have students bring a small item from home, or have you hold up a mystery object for the class. Ask students to describe it using simple prompts like “It is…,” “It can…,” and “It is used for…,” and then let them guess what it is. This warm-up gets students speaking quickly while keeping the focus on familiar vocabulary and clear, confidence-building structures.
You can model one example first, so students understand the task and feel safe taking risks. You can keep the pace fast by limiting each student to one clue before the class guesses, and you can also recycle the target language by requiring one adjective and one function phrase in every description. You can run the same activity online by using your camera or a shared slide with a blurred image that you reveal after the guesses.
ESL warm-up activities for teens and adults
As mentioned before, teenagers and adults have equal needs for fun warm-up activities as young learners. Here are some slightly more complex warm-ups that will engage your older students and prepare them for the lesson.
Teach English to adults online using games and fun activities with these teaching tips.
1. Sentence scramble
For this activity, you can divide the students into small groups or pairs, or they can work on their own. Come up with a few sentences before class, and write the words of the sentences on your physical or virtual whiteboard in a random order. The first group or individual student to unscramble the words and read the sentence aloud correctly wins that round.
When you create the sentences, you can use motivating mottos, the target language of the day, or review a grammar point from a previous lesson.
Learn how to teach English grammar with confidence – even if you’re terrible at it.
2. Storytelling
This is a great ESL warm-up activity for English classes that encourage teamwork and practicing vocabulary and grammar. You can use it in the online classroom as long as you have a whiteboard behind you that is visible to the students.
Ask each student to give you one word they know. This can be a noun, an adjective, a preposition, or anything they want to include in the story. Collect the words by writing them on the whiteboard. When you have all the words from your students written on the board, let them collaborate to tell a story with them. If they need help, you can ask questions like “How shall we start?” “Which word shall we use first?” or “What comes next?”
Check off the words as the class tells the story, and make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute!
Learn about the power of storytelling in the ESL classroom.
Find the materials that will benefit your students the most with the free
ESL Teacher’s Guide to Lesson Planning Resources
download3. Speed interview
This activity revolves around improving fluency and asking questions. Students will have a chance to learn about each other and to use English freely. This is a good activity for intermediate to advanced learners.
Write a topic on the board or tell your students the topic of the day. This can be as simple as “Food” or more complex, such as “Your favorite memory.” Put students into pairs and have them interview their partner by creating questions related to the topic. They can ask as many questions as they can within one minute, and then their partner has one minute to ask them questions. After the time is up, put students into new pairs and repeat as time allows.
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Pro Tip: Instead of putting students into pairs, you can also let them take turns speaking to the whole class at once and asking their classmates the questions they created.
4. Guide me
For this English warm-up activity, show students a map of a town and choose a starting point and a destination. Then, in pairs or as a whole class, have students provide directions to the destination to guide you on the map. You can use this primarily as a speaking activity, or have students write the directions down for extra writing practice.
Alternatively, you can give students maps (either digitally or physically), a starting point, and a set of directions they have to follow to reach their destination. Have students race to see who can follow the directions the fastest and figure out the secret destination first!
5. Art appreciation
Print out some inkblots or images of abstract paintings ahead of the lesson. Hold up one of the pictures and ask the class, “What do you see in this picture?” Give your students some time to think, then call on them or let them raise their hands. Let them express the impressions, feelings, or words they associate with the picture, without correcting them or interrupting them. It is very important that the students feel comfortable expressing their thoughts for this warm-up activity.
The results are very rewarding, and you can learn a lot about your students’ personalities, which you can reflect on later to tailor your lessons to your students.
6. Two truths and a lie
Have each student write three short statements about themselves – two true and one false. Students read their statements aloud, and classmates ask follow-up questions before they vote on the lie. This warm-up builds fluency, question formation, and real interaction without putting students on the spot with high-stakes accuracy.
You can give students a theme to keep it focused, such as travel, work, food, or “this week”, and even require one past tense sentence and one present perfect sentence if you want a light grammar review without turning it into a drill. Rotate who asks questions by assigning roles so quieter students still have a chance to participate. Finish by asking students to share which question helped them guess and why, so the class notices useful question types.
ESL warm-up activities, no matter which age, level, or group size, lead up to a fun, successful, meaningful lesson that your students will get more out of. Warm-up games for the English class give your students a chance to use the English they’ve learned so far, to review, and to experiment with new expressions – plus, they’re loads of fun.
Teachers do not need a perfect warm-up to teach a great lesson, but they do need a good start. Good ESL warm-up activities set the tone of the lesson and help students feel ready to participate. Teens and adults respond well when you give them a warm-up with a clear purpose and a low-stakes start. Tasks that prompt real talk and quick thinking build fluency and connection, making the rest of the lesson easier by beginning with language that learners can actually use and relate to.
