Each activity in this chapter can play one or more of the following roles in a lesson:

• ice-breaker

• warm up

• break

• closer

A few can also serve as lead-ins to longer, main-lesson activities.

Let us look at the first four functions in more detail.

An ‘ice-breaker’ is a short activity specifically for use with learners who do not yet know each other well. The most obvious purposes of an ice-breaker are to help people learn each other's names and to help students begin to get acquainted with each other. A typical ice-breaker will also fulfil most of the aims of a warm up, break and/or closer (see further below). Finally, an ice-breaker will generally enable you to see each student in action – if only briefly – before you embark on other work. This can be invaluable as a means of getting early notice of learners likely to need special attention for one reason or another.

A ‘warm up’ is a brief activity to do at the beginning of a lesson for any of the following reasons: to get your students' attention, to review and recycle previous learning, to help your students get in the mood to work with others, to cheer them up or wake them up if they seem tired or bored, to calm them down if they are over-excited, to introduce the theme of work to follow, to create a buffer period during which latecomers can be absorbed relatively easily, to make students want to come on time, to encourage a positive attitude towards English, and to help build a feeling of group solidarity.