In the previous EIT article, I shared several more lead ins for the classroom. This time around, I’m providing a few lead-ins, activities that preview the topic, grammar or vocabulary of your lesson. This is an important part of resources and guides for ESL teachers.
Related and Unrelated Vocabulary:Lead Ins For the Classroom
Choose 5 words that are related to the topic of your lesson, and think of 5 more that are unrelated. Write these up on the board in random order. Put students into pairs and ask them to guess which 5 words have something to do with the day’s lesson. After they’ve discussed a couple of minutes, call on several pairs to read out their guess. Finally, reveal the answer by erasing the 5 unrelated words.
Lead Ins in the Classroom: Musical Opening
More lead ins for the classroom include play a song that relates to the topic of your lesson. If your class has a projector, you might want to play a version on YouTube that features lyrics, if one exists. Play it once, and then ask students for their reactions.
Lead Ins in the Classroom: Chorus of Words
Before class, choose an important sentence from your teaching material (one that includes vocabulary or grammar you want students to focus on). The sentence should be between 9 to 12 words. Write each word on a separate card. In class, invite one student to leave the classroom for a couple of minutes. Give each student a card, and tell them to say the words in different ways (whispering, shouting, singing, slowly, quickly, etc.) when the other student returns. They should say the words over and over several times, and they should talk over each other. Bring the student back into class. Ask him to listen to the words and try to write the correct sentence on the board.
Mind Map
Write the topic of your lesson in the middle of the board. Draw a circle around it. Ask a student to give you a word that relates to the topic. Write it on the board, draw a circle around that word, and draw a line back to the circle in the middle of the board. Continue this process, adding new words until you have about 14 or 15.
Click here for original article” Warmers and Lead Ins” by Hall Houston
Click here for “More Warmers” by Hall Houston
Hall Houstonteaches at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Science. His articles have been published in periodicals such as It’s for Teachers, Modern English Teacher and English Teaching Professional. He has written 5 books including Brainstorming and Creative Output, both available on Amazon.
