20 20 warm up games

See if the class can find a valid sequence together. Some possible sequences are:. Students will need access to a dictionary in order to check if their words are valid.

If you want to find possible word pairs, there is a site with a handy word ladder generator. Put students in pairs and have them create their own word ladders to test their classmates with.

Give students a theme, for example, jobs, things you take on holiday, food. Write the letters A to Z on the board. Teams of students must race to write an appropriate word next to each letter on the board. Read more about the A to Z game here. Find a group of compound words or collocations which share a common word. For example, bedroom, bathroom, living room, classroom, showroom , etc.

Here are some more examples:. Set a five-minute time limit and in groups have students think up and write down as many facts as they can about bananas or cats, Belgium, David Beckham, etc. One point should be given for each true sentence. One of many brilliantly simple ideas from one of my favourite teaching books. Ask students to come up with a list of as many unconventional uses for it as they can. For example paperweight, weapon, pen holder, smartphone dock.

The longest list wins the potato. Students sit in silence for two minutes and write down every sound that they hear. Let them compare their lists with their neighbours before seeing who has the longest list? If you like this activity try doing a guess the sound quiz. Give the students a couple of examples to guess, then get students to come up with their own ideas. An ESL classroom staple.

Write or dictate three sentences about yourself. Two statements should be true and one false, for example: I used to be an air steward I can ride a unicycle My favourite food is sushi Now invite students to discuss in pairs which statement they think is the lie.

Ask each pair which statement they think is untrue and have them explain why. Reveal your answer, and ask students to come up with three sentences about themselves. I find students need quite a lot of time at least five minutes to come up with three ideas. If some students are still short of a sentence or two, start the game anyway, and they can finish their statements during play. In each case, the other students have to guess which is the untrue statement.

See this page for more ideas on using dishonesty for fun and profit. Say a word from a list of homophones and challenge students to write both or more forms of the word. Possible words include: bear,bare,piece,peace,not,knot,here,hear,witch,which,flower,flour,would,wood,be,bee,heal,heel,soul,sole,air,heir,break,brake,mist,missed,read,red,board,bored,buy,bye,pair,pear,male,mail,jeans,genes,not,knot,where,wear , so,sew,sow.

Based on the code-breaking board game where players have to deduce the order of 4 coloured pegs which the other player had hidden behind a plastic guard.

Think of a four-letter word and write XXXX on the board, each X represents one of the letters of your word. Invite the first student to guess what the word is. Start a new line underneath your original XXXX. In the following example, the teacher chooses the word FIRE. Stick to 4 or 5 letter words. When students are familiar with the game you can get them to come and put their own words on the board.

This is a guess the rule type game. Think of a rule which governs which items can be taken on a picnic, for example, it must be six letters long, or it must start with a vowel. In this example, the rule is that the word must be an uncountable noun. Student B : Can I take orange juice? Teacher : Yes, you can take orange juice. And so on. Give an initial word, for example, banana and each student takes it in turns to say a word which they associate with the previous word.

This is another circle game. Going around the class students take it in turns to add three words to your story stem. You could start it off with relatively mundane stems such as Yesterday I went …, If I won …, I have never or something more imaginative like, A wolf howled, the rocket landed …, Princess Martha kissed … Write the story on the board and elicit corrections as you go along. Ask the class to think of one thing they can do which nobody else in the class can do.

For example a student could ask the class, can you count to ten in Chinese? You could turn it into a knock-out competition — playing until there is one person left standing. Simply ask students to work in pairs and find three things that they have in common and then report back to the class.

Based on the BBC Radio show. Draw a Tic Tac Toe grid on the board and in each space write a topic that you think some of your students might be interested in or have some knowledge of. Play the game with two teams, to claim their X or O , a team member must attempt to talk about the topic in the chosen square for 45 to 60 seconds depending on their level without pausing or repetition. Check out this tic tac toe past tense activity for more information about how to play this popular ESL game.

The Counting Game is one of the simplest virtual improv team building exercises. The point of the activity is to count to ten as a group, one person at a time. However, if two players say the same number at once, then participants must restart the count at one.

This game helps teammates read body language on Zoom and can help participants improve their timing and decrease instances of talking over each other on calls. To make the game more challenging, you can ask participants to turn their cameras off, or continue the count past ten to see how high the group can go. Questions is one of the easiest improv games to play on Zoom.

The only rule of this game is that all dialogue must be in question form. To start the exercise, give players a situation, and choose a character to go first. The first player will ask a question, and another player will respond. Actors can challenge each other by addressing questions directly to other players. Any participant who pauses, freezes, or responds with a statement must turn their webcam off and sit out the rest of the scene.

The game ends when only one player remains, or when the scene reaches a natural end. Here are more question games to play at work. Rhymes is a speaking improv game that encourages players to make spontaneous poetry. You will need at least three players for this game, and should have no more than six to eight players maximum.

To start the exercise, set the situation for the scene, and choose a player to give the first line. Every reply must be a rhyme. Players must rhyme the previous statement at least once, however can rhyme the same word multiple times.

Players cannot end phrases in words that do not rhyme with anything, such as silver or orange. You can also challenge certain players to respond to the rhyme by spotlighting these individuals. Mimic is one of the most fun theatre games to play on Zoom. The purpose of this activity is to copy the behavior of another player. At the start of each round, two players volunteer.

One will be the main, and the other the mimic. The main character will act out a scene, and the mimic must follow their lead. To make the game more entertaining, the main character can use props and force the mimic to improvise with whatever objects are within reach.

At the end of the game, the audience can score how well the mimic copied the main character. Line, Please is a game where players must read out random lines in the middle of the action. First, characters start acting out a situation. If you want to make the game more interactive, then you can ask other audience members to think up the lines before the game starts and privately message those phrases to the players instead of using a generator.

Puppet Master is one of the most fun big group Zoom improv games. To start the exercise, the leader chooses a few volunteers, and at least one puppet master. The audience does not know the identity of the puppet master, as the leader privately messages the person. The leader sets up the scene, and the actors start the sketch. Throughout the scene, the puppet master privately messages the actors commands, and the actors must follow those orders and work the requests into the scene immediately.

Props is a Zoom improv game that uses objects. At the start of each round, the game master tells players to grab a prop. Over to You is a mock meeting game. The premise is that participants are presenting during a Zoom meeting. The first player reads a prompt from a generator , then presents accordingly. The player must somehow make the random situation relevant to the business meeting. To make the game more fun, you can also prepare fake unlabeled reports and graphs or slideshows that participants must present and explain.

One Line at a Time is a storytelling exercise where participants make up a story by adding sentences one by one. This game is one of the best virtual improv team building exercises. You can either play by typing responses into the Zoom chat or saying the sentences out loud. You can also spotlight different characters to add the next line. If you have a big group, then you can split attendees up into breakout rooms.

You can also turn the game into a listening exercise by challenging an audience member to repeat or summarize the story once it is complete. Newscast is a roleplaying improv game where actors make up fake news reports on the spot. The game begins with the meeting host spotlighting two anchors. These anchors each get two or three random fake news stories or headlines, submitted by the audience, to read and explain during the broadcast. At random points during the game, the anchors can pass the action over to another player by announcing the sports, weather, cooking, interviews, on-the-scene reporting, or commercials.

The anchor can introduce another teammate as the presenter, or the host can choose a random participant. Word Association is one of the easiest Zoom improv warm ups and works for groups of all sizes. A leader reads out a list of random words one by one, and meeting attendees share the first word that comes to mind, either by shouting it out or typing it in the chat.

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