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I’m all about ESL warm-ups. It’s hard for our students if we lead right into the main lesson without giving them a chance to warm-up their brains, and start thinking, talking, reading and writing in English. It’s also the perfect opportunity to do some review of the things I’ve taught in previous classes.
Although it does take a few minutes to do a warm-up, I find that the rest of the class goes much more smoothly if I do one, so I do!
Many of my warm-ups you’ll see online are loud, active, partner or group focused and require speaking. I like to use a few quieter, individual ones that I know some of the more introverted students appreciate. Proof-reading and editing is one of these quieter activities.
Proof-Reading & Editing: An ESL Warm-Up Activity
Skills: Writing
Materials Required: Worksheet/whiteboard/PowerPoint, workbook
To keep proper grammar usage fresh in your students’ minds, they should practice frequently. This doesn’t need to be a full grammar lesson; a quick warm-up can do the trick.
You can give your students a variety of errors to correct: word choice, word order, punctuation, capitalization, etc. You can give them a worksheet if you have time to prepare it. Otherwise, put a few sentences up on the PowerPoint and students can write the correct sentence or passage in their notebooks.
Editing and proof-reading makes an excellent ESL warm-up activity for kids as well as adults. It can take only a minute, or up to 10, depending on how difficult you make it. This activity can also reinforce a huge number of concepts—spelling, punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, etc. Just about anything really!
Teaching Tips:
Begin by asking students a few review questions about whatever rules they are practicing. (“When do you use capital letters?” or “What is a run-on sentence? How can you fix it?”)
Also do one example sentence with them so they have a clear idea of what they need to do for the rest of them.
Procedure for Proof-Reading & Editing Warm-Up:
1. In advance, prepare a worksheet or PowerPoint, or write several sentences on the whiteboard. You could even take a previous workbook activity and reproduce it.
2. The sentences or passage should practice previously studied points of grammar by having errors of that sort: word choice, word order, punctuation, capitalization, etc.
3. Have students correct the errors. If they are working from a PowerPoint or the white board, have them write the sentences or passage correctly in their notebooks.
4. Go over the answers quickly as a class.
Like this ESL Warm-Up Activity?
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