Why Warming Up Is So
Important
Welcome to ‘Five-Minute Warm-Up Speaking Activities’. This
lesson aims to provide you with a variety of engaging warm-up
activities designed to kickstart conversation and language
production in your English language classes.
Warming up is crucial as it helps students ease into the learning
environment, activates their language skills, and builds confidence
for the main lesson. By incorporating these short warm-up
activities, you can create a positive and interactive atmosphere
that encourages students to actively participate and communicate
in English.
Five-Minute Warm-Up Activities
Go to the
1 Two truths and a lie slide
Go to the
2 What am I talking about? slide
Go to the
3 Story builders slide
Go to the
4 Let’s talk! slide
Go to the
5 Common ground slide
Go to the
6 Find someone who slide
Go to the
7 Continue the sentence slide
Go to the
8 What am I thinking of? slide
Two Truths and a Lie
Get ready to uncover interesting facts about your classmates in this engaging
icebreaker.
How to run this activity:
• In "Two Truths and a Lie," each participant shares three statements about
themselves. Two are true and one is a false statement.
• The other students have to guess which one is fiction.
Example:
Student 1. Ok, three statements about me. One, I have two cats. Two, my
grandparents are originally from Peru. And three, I love reading comics.
Student 2. That’s difficult! I think number two is fiction! You don’t look Peruvian.
Student 3. I disagree. You could be Peruvian. But somehow, I can’t imagine you
reading comics!
Extra practice: Students can ask questions about the three statements to test
their validity!
What Am I Talking About?
In this fun activity,students take turns describing words to their partners.
How to run this activity:
• One student chooses a word from the words spread around the following
slide without telling the others what it is.
• They start by saying “What am I talking about?”, and then describe
that word without saying the word itself!
• The others have to guess what the word is.
• It now passes to the next student.
Example:
Extra practice:
Student 1: It’s something you typically find in the Choose different sets
living room of a house. You can sit on it. It’s usually of vocabulary to
comfortable.
practice describing.
Student 2: Is it a sofa? These could be things
you have learned in
Student 1: Yes it is! You turn! class.
What Am I Talking About?
mobile
surfboard table battery curtains
phone
pavement lamp hat
helicopte
tower
r
jar
fish
trousers
giraffe
dog
folder steak
sock
sandwich
washing
dice elevator
machine
microwav
cow oven milk parrot
e
Story Builders
Jumpstart creativity and narrative skills with "Story Builders". Each
participant contributes a sentence to collectively build an engaging story,
encouraging spontaneous speaking, grammar practice, and storytelling
abilities.
How to run this activity:
• You can do this activity with the whole class or in smaller groups and
even pairs.
• The teacher or a student starts by choosing one of the story starters on
the following slide and reading it out loud.
• The next student continues the story by inventing a sentence.
• Students continue adding to the story as you go round.
Extra practice: Students can invent their own story starters to
encourage more creativity and speaking practice.
Story Builders
Story Starters:
1 I was sitting on my couch watching TV, when suddenly…
John saw Alice sitting on the other side of the room and decided
2
to…
3 I looked out the window and saw a huge…
4 Tim was driving his car down the high street of his town when…
5 I was bored of listening to the teacher so I…
6 Just as she was about to eat her sandwich…
7 Tommy had never seen anything like this before…
It was a cold dark night and Jenny was walking along the street
8
when…
Let’s Talk!
This fun activity encourages students to talk about a wide range of
different topics.
How to run this activity:
• Divide the class into two sides. This could be the whole class or in small
groups.
• Side A chooses a topic for Side B to talk about from the topics on the
following slide.
• Side B must talk about that topic for two minutes with no long pauses.
• When Side B has finished talking they must choose a topic for side A and
so on.
Extra practice: Extra practice: Students can brainstorm more topics to
include in the list of things to talk about.
Let’s Talk!
favourite
technology jobs relaxing
food
childhoo social
weekends friends
d media
an incredible
siblings winter
experience
a horrible
something you love interests
experience
something you
doing the sea kids
hate
a prized a family
Mondays summer
possession member
Common Ground
In this short, dynamic speaking activity, students will speak and get to know
each other better. It’s a great activity to practice question forms.
How to run this activity:
• Put students in pairs or small groups.
• They have three minutes to find out as many things that they have in
common as possible
Example:
Student 1: Do you enjoy playing tennis?
Student 2: Yes! I love playing tennis. I play every weekend in a local tennis club.
Student 1: Oh me too! How about football? Do you like it?
Extra practice: Students can report back to the whole class the things
they discovered they had in common.
Find Someone Who…
This is a great game to get students mingling and practice question forms.
How to run this activity:
• Students write the experiences and characteristics listed on the following
slide.
• They then go around the class asking questions to different partners.
• They have to find people in the class who have had the experiences or
match the characteristics listed.
• When they find someone, they ask them a bit more about that experience
and write down their name next to the description.
• After five-ten ten minutes, stop the activity and students report their
findings to the whole class (optional)
Extra practice: Students can create their own experiences and
characteristic to add to the activity.
Find Someone Who…
Has visited more than five Has a favorite TV show
1 10
countries. they never miss.
2 Can play a musical instrument. 11 Prefers tea over coffee.
3 Has a pet at home. Has tried an extreme sport
12 (e.g., skydiving, bungee
Speaks more than two
4 jumping).
languages.
5 Has lived in another country. 13 Is a vegetarian or vegan.
6 Enjoys cooking.
7 Has met someone famous.
8 Has been on a cruise.
9 Knows how to dance salsa.
Continue The Sentence
Encourage speaking and creativity with this fun ice-breaking activity.
How to run this activity:
• Students take turns to choose one of the sentence starters listed on the
following slide and read it out loud.
• The other students have a few seconds to improvise an ending to the
sentence and read their full sentences out loud
• The students vote on who created the most inventive or fun sentence and
that student gets a point.
• The next student chooses another sentence starter and so on.
Extra practice: Students can create their own sentence starters to test
their classmates.
Continue The Sentence
He was sitting at home
1 He had never… 8
when…
2 When I opened the door… 9 He felt awful when…
They all laughed at him
3 My dog suddenly… 10
when…
4 It was the biggest… 11 I have always wanted to…
He had never seen
5 It was the first time I… 12
anything…
6 I couldn’t believe it when… 13 If I won the lottery, …
She was walking in the park In my house you must
7 14
when… always…
What Am I Thinking Of?
This is a fun and engaging game where one participant thinks of an object or
thing, and the others have to guess what it is by asking yes or no questions.
How to run this activity:
• Start by selecting one student to be the "Thinker." This person will think of
an object, animal, or concept that the others will try to guess.
• Encourage participants to ask questions that help narrow down the
options. For example, they might ask questions like, "Is it alive?" or "Can
you find it in a kitchen?" The Thinker can only answer "yes" or "no" to
these questions.
• Participants continue asking questions until someone is confident enough
to guess what the Thinker is thinking of. Making a guess counts as a turn!
• Once the object has been guessed correctly or the group gives up, choose
a new Thinker and start the game again.
Extra practice: You can also play this in reverse, where the “Thinker”
gives short clues to the rest of the group and they have to guess what it
is.
