jueves, 6 de febrero de 2014

The importance of warm-ups

    

  Warm up is usually a review of the previous lesson or a preview of the lesson to be developed. It may be a fun game to catch students' attention.

Warm-ups are activities that teachers can use for creating a good atmosphere where the students can feel comfortable with their teacher and classmates; moreover, they can forget just for a moment the goal of the class. Warm-ups have the characteristics of  raising the mood of the students for example warm-ups can cheer up the students who are sad or worried about any trouble, and  they just forget for a while their issues.

Teachers can use them in all the levels of English such as basic, intermediate, and advanced English because all the warm-ups are really funny and entertaining for everyone; however, teachers have to take into account the quantity of knowledge that their students have; on the other hand, they have to make warm-ups according to the students’ level.

The activities that my classmates presented can be used in whatever level including  basic English for example the activities called “Last Name Adjective”  the only thing that students have to do is write an adjective that starts with the first letter of their last name; then, they have to share something about them. The others activities “People to People”, “Yarn Web”, and “All you can Write” were funny, and they can be used in whatever level too.

What I liked from the warm-ups was that they were easy to understand and were funny too; moreover, my classmates could practice the words that they know even they could learn new words because each one shared words.

What I would have changed in the activity “Last Name Adjective” is the way that people wrote their names; I would have done that everyone wrote only the name with the first letter of their Las name; after, someone else would have written an adjective that started with the first letter of their name.

In the activity “All you can write” I would have change the way that people participated on the board. I would have written a different word for each group and would have also done that everyone had participated on the board one by one.

In my opinion, warm-ups are always a necessary to start a class because it is funny and cheer up students. Moreover, they help  to raise the mood of the students and help to disappear feelings like sadness, laziness and boredom; for that reasons, the teachers always have to start a class with a warm-up