ESL warm-up activities: 3 to 5 minutes that set up every lesson

The first five minutes of an online lesson decide a lot. Your learner has just closed a work call or put the children to bed, her head is still in her own language, and the default opener ("How was your week?") gets "Fine, thanks, and you?" and not much else. We've written before about why that passive start loses people. This post is the practical follow-up: what to run in those minutes, every lesson, so they do some work.

The short answer: a warm-up should rehearse the language today's lesson is about to need.

What a warm-up is for

A warm-up switches the learner into English and brings back the words and structures today's lesson is about to build on. ESL warmers get lumped together with icebreakers and lead-ins, but they do different jobs.

	Icebreaker	Warm-up	Lead-in
When	First lesson, new group	Every lesson	Just before new material
Job	Learn names, lower nerves	Switch into English, recall what today needs	Raise interest in today's topic
Language	Anything	Mostly known, aimed at today's target	Today's topic, often new
Length	10 to 20 minutes	3 to 5 minutes	2 to 5 minutes

A good warm-up also gives you a quick read on where she is today, before you have committed to a plan.

The recall job is where warm-up lists disagree. One popular list of warmers for online classes says a warmer "can be about anything" and may be "completely different from the content of the subsequent lesson." TtMadrid Another lists "leading towards the lesson content or target language" and "using mostly known vocabulary" among the marks of a good one. Bridge A random warmer will get people talking. In our view a targeted one is the better default: it does that and also sets up the next 40 minutes, for no extra prep.

The research on lesson openings sides with targeting. In Barak Rosenshine's summary of classroom studies, the most effective teachers "began their lessons with a five- to eight-minute review of previously covered material," because "it is important for a teacher to help students recall the concepts and vocabulary that will be relevant for the day's lesson because our working memory is very limited." Rosenshine, Principles of Instruction (2012)

A look from dance

Dance science moved the class warm-up past raising heart rate. The aim, in Donna Krasnow and Steven Chatfield's review of dance science and the technique class, is "to give warm-up material that is dance specific, rather than general activities that succeed in increasing heat and blood flow," kept simple enough that dancers can focus on doing it well. Swap "dance" for "English" and you have a spec for an ESL warm-up: built from today's lesson, and easy enough to get right.

Donna Krasnow and Steven Chatfield, Dance Science and the Dance Technique Class (Impulse, 1996).

In teaching terms this is activating prior knowledge: bringing what the learner already knows to the front of her mind, so the new material has something to attach to. Jumping jacks get the blood moving. A warm-up built from today's language gets the right material ready.

Which ten warm-ups work in one-to-one online lessons

These ten warm-ups each work with two people and a screen, and each is matched to the lesson that follows. Most of the warmer lists we found assume a classroom: teams, a board race, students moving to opposite walls. One-to-one on a video call, you are the only other player.

Today's lesson	Warm-up (3 to 5 minutes)	How it runs	What it brings back
Vocabulary	90-second Quiz on last lesson's words	Send the link as she joins; she plays while you share your screen	Last lesson's set, a week later
Past simple	Three things since our last lesson, one false	She tells you three, you guess the false one, then swap	Past forms, did questions
Present perfect	"Have you ever...?" ping-pong	Five questions each, every "yes" gets a "When?"	The switch from present perfect to past simple
Comparatives	this or that, with a reason	"Train or plane? Why?" She answers in one sentence: "The train is cheaper."	Comparative forms
Reading	Headline prediction	Show today's headline; she writes three words she expects in the text	Topic vocabulary, before she reads
Listening	What can you hear?	Show a photo of the place in today's recording; she names five sounds or things	The lexical set of the recording
Writing	Fix-it from her last text	Three of her own sentences from last week, each with one error, in Find the Mistake	Her own errors, while they are fresh
Exam prep	One timed task	A single exam-style question, 60 seconds to answer aloud, you time it	Exam format and pace
Work English	My week in three verbs	She picks three verbs for her week and says one sentence for each	Work vocabulary, the tense she needs
Any lesson	Pick a Card	A deck of eight questions from last lesson's topic; she draws and answers	Last lesson's language, in her own words

Two things make these work. They use language she already has, so the success rate tends to be high and the start feels good. And each one points somewhere: by minute five, she has already said a version of what the lesson is about to teach.

What a 90-second Quiz warm-up looks like

We would start with the first row of the table, because it needs no thought on the day. Last lesson's words, as a short Quiz, sent as a link the moment she joins the call:

A 90-second warm-up Quiz

Choose the preposition that completes each sentence.

Question 1 of 6

We start work ___ nine o'clock.

inonat

Next question

That Quiz is a stand-in. Yours would be last Thursday's ten words, the ones you taught her. In Lingoken the set you built for the last lesson is already there: switch it to a Quiz and send the link. She plays without an account, and her results arrive per question, so by the time you have said hello you know which three words to recycle today. That re-test a week later is also the spacing that makes review stick.

How to make the warm-up a routine

Keep the warm-up's shape fixed from lesson to lesson and change only the content. In a classroom, variety in warmers keeps a group awake; one-to-one, tutors often find a predictable start does something different: the learner knows that the first five minutes are hers, low-stakes and winnable, and she arrives ready for them.

Time	What happens
0:00 to 0:30	Hello, and the link goes into the chat
0:30 to 3:00	The warm-up itself
3:00 to 4:30	One follow-up question that uses the warm-up's language
4:30 to 5:00	One sentence that names today's aim: "Today we're going to use these to..."

The last step is the bridge. It turns "a game at the start" into the first step of the lesson.

Where icebreakers fit

If this is your first lesson with a new learner, you want an icebreaker: something to learn about her and settle nerves, and it can run longer. From the second lesson on, swap it for a warm-up like the ones above. They take less time and rehearse today's language, and over a term those few minutes a lesson add up to a lot of recall practice.

Sources & further reading

• Principles of Instruction (Rosenshine, 2012). American Educator. Principle 1: begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning.
• Dance Science and the Dance Technique Class (Krasnow and Chatfield, 1996). Impulse. How dance science reshaped the warm-up and the order of a technique class.
• 12 ESL warm-up activities for English classes at every age. Bridge. A classroom-oriented list with useful criteria for a good warm-up.