Warmers, Fillers and Breaks

By: Shelia A. Peace

December, 2008
 Warmers, Fillers and Breaks

Miming Game

1. Pre-teach lexis using a set of verb picture Flashcards depicting (sitting, study,
crying, playing, and so on)
• As a task, [students] will be directed to orally answer / record the
actions to answer Teacher questions for each verb picture flashcard:
“What is he/she doing?” Students will be directed to use present
continuous tense to answer (e.g. walking, sleeping, sitting, laughing,
singing, etc.).

Use of this form/sentence structure is important because students will be

mining (i.e. acting-out) the verbs. As teams will be performing the actions,
context is set be present continuous sentence structure.

2. Review/ Game Warm-Up

• [Students] will take turns coming to the front of the class, and picking
from a face-down deck of verb picture flashcards, on action-only card
(no writing) to act-out. [This reviews/reinforces comprehension of
verbs and answering language.]
As he/she acts-out the card , Teacher will ask: “What is he/she doing?”
eliciting present continuous tense responses (e.g. “He is walking.”/
“She is cleaning.”/ “They are studying.”) until every student has had a
chance to act-out and answer.
[Teacher] elicitation of verb lexis from [Students] should help them
review/teach one another target lexis in present continuous form.

3. Game Time:
• Divide class into two teams.
• Each team member will take turns picking and acting-out a verb picture-
card. Students have 10-seconds to answer after teacher asks: “What is
he/she doing?”
• The first team to answer correctly the question “What is he/she doing?”
using present continuous tense (e.g. “He/She is running.” “He/She is
waiting.” -- and so on) gets a point.
• Everyone has to act-out a card. The team with the most points at the end
of the game wins.

Advantages

• Visuals (picture Flashcards) encourage lexis intake/reception.

• Students learn and use lexis at the same time ( traditional grammar-
translation students learn vocabulary, but have a problem using it in
sentences).
• Functional language (asking/describing actions) is introduced as a “game”,
thus learned without stress on the student
 • As verbs are “elicited,” students learn from their peers: resulting in less
Teacher Talking Time and greater student success/confidence in target lexis
• Competition encourages retention of lexis form and sentence structure,
allowing later transfer of target lexis to new contexts/tenses. (e.g., What
were you doing?/ “I was doing my homework.” Or “What will you be doing
next week?”/ I’ll be seeing my friends.”)

Disadvantages

• “Shy” students will be reluctant to “act-out” verbs.

• Weak students may want to “ sit-out” this lesson.
• Student may use “ team” time to converse in L1, and not pay attention to
actor.
• Careful monitoring of answers will be necessary to judge which team
answered first , or call a “tie.”
• A tie-breaker has to be pre-determined .
• Students may feel monitor is not “fair” if “tie” is broken in favor of competing
team.

To overcome disadvantages, students will be encouraged to “coach” their

teammates or step in as replacement if one cannot act-out a verb. If the game is seen
as something “fun” to do, there will be no punishment for not “getting it.”

Weak students should “pick up” on whole-class answers, thus increasing “intake”
likelihood. Monitors have to be diligent about “guiding” [students] to fully
participate; maybe offering a team prize to the winner (candy, tokens, etc.) In the
spirit of “fun,” if the ties are near equal, both teams can get a prize, with the winners
getting double.

Dr. Paul Robertson wrote in Teaching English Language Skills to the Asian
Learner (2008, Asian EFL Journal)) that “…speech production is affected by speech
perception; the learner has become an important factor in communicative discourse
and … body language (which varies between cultures) needs to be taught.”

To this end, acting-out verbs is an excellent way to teach/reinforce communicate

language skills is ESL students.

Ending, by quoting Harmer, I agree that: “Well timed effective feedback will
praise students for what is done right “…offering them the ability to do things better
where they were less successful. (How to Teach English. Pearson Education Limited,
1998.)