Crazy compliments

I was looking through some material we had lying around for five-minute activities and came across this one that I haven’t yet used with my students as a warmer.

Create some placards with some instructions for the students to follow. The instructions can be something like – ‘say something nice about my English’, or, tell me something nice about my eyes’. Pin or tape each placard to the student’s backs and ask them to move around, reading and obeying the instructions as they read them.

Update:

I found out something interesting with one of my groups when we tried out this activity. My group has a good group feeling and get along just fine, its mixed adults and has a teenager in the group too. After explaining what the activity was and fixing the instructions to each person, they mingled around but were not saying anything. I asked them if they understood to which they replied yes. After a little prompting from me to get them going, they were still pretty quiet. Finally I asked them if the instructions were too hard or they just didn’t want to take part and they told me that they were embarrassed to give compliments to each other, as per the instructions hahahahaha!! A little more encouragement including compliments from me to get them going and we were soon rolling. Next time, I’ll choose something that will be probably a lot simpler for them to do, requiring no blushing

Paragraph changing activity

This activity can be used after the main work for a text is completed. It’s suitable for all levels and can be done in the following way:

1. Depending on the size and amount of paragraphs in the text, assign each student (if the group is small), pair or group a text from the text.
2. Ask the students to change two facts in their paragraph.
3. The students read their changed paragraph to the class.*
4. The other students try to spot the incorrect facts.

*It would be a good idea to ask advanced students to turn over their texts as the students read to see how much they can remember of the text from memory as they listen for the changed facts.