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WARMERS
2nd August, 2004
This session is a potpourri of ideas for warmers. It
includes ‘lateral thinking’ exercises and an additional document called ‘guessing
games’.
Warmers
Telepathy
(With smaller groups, maybe up
to 10)
Pair students A and B.
Student A sits with back to
board, pen and paper at the ready, while student B sits facing board. A
mustn't turn around. Have them chat in pairs, for 2 minutes (about their
weekend, for example.) This gives you time to write up one sentence for each
pair (each one different but similar level of difficulty) on the Board, as
well as one for you to do as a demo.
Sentences can be for any level
and focus on any language you've covered so far.
The idea is for Student B to
describe their sentence to their partner without using any of the words
actually written on the board. Student A must write it down exactly word for
word.
The first pair to finish wins.
The teacher should do a demo first to show how words can be explained. EG the
sentence "He went by plane" may give rise to "the third person
...for a man...the past of go....fourth word is a form of transport.....no
slower than a plane....." and so on.
Charades
Very often we have to rely on
sign language in a foreign country where we don't speak the lingo to well.
Practice in using body language via Charade games helps sharpen this tool.
One student is given a sentence
to mime. EG "My brother hates chicken".
They come to the front, mime it and other students guess. The must get it
write word for word.
Can be adapted to all levels, to any language point. You can even get the
students to write the sentences.
Circle
ball throwing
Students stand in a circle.
Teacher throws a ball to student A, who throws it to student B and so on. It
is very important that a pattern is established here, i.e. they must always
throw to the same person.
Slowly speed up.
As this continues, more balls
can be thrown in, so a kind of chain is begun.
Then, the circle can start to move and walk (or run) around the room, the
ball always been thrown in the same order.
This encourages team work and
group bonding.
Each student can also be made
responsible for the person he throws to. So it's my responsibility that the
person I throw to catches the ball.
Lateral
thinking
Give students a scenario (see
list) and they have to ask questions (Yes / No) to discover what happened.
Example:
Romeo and Juliet are in a room
with no windows.
They are dead. There is a cat in the room. There is a
puddle of water on the floor. What happened?
Students may ask: Did they
fight? Were they poisoned? Did Romeo slip and bang his head?...........and so
on.
(See list below for answer and
more examples)
LATERAL
THINKING EXAMPLES
1. Romeo and Juliet are in a
room with no windows.
They are dead. There is a cat in the room. There is a
puddle of water on the floor. What happened?
Answer: They are fish and the
cat ate them.
2. Six people rode in a car for
a hundred kilometers.
The car was a small one in which only four people
could be comfortable. The journey took almost two
hours, and all this time the car had a flat tire. Yet
no one, not even the driver, knew about it. Why?
Answer: The spare tire was flat.
3. While driving home at 2 a.m.,
Jane realizes that one
of her front tires is flat. Working in the dark, she
changes the tire. But when she reaches for the nuts
to fasten the tire, she realizes that they are lost.
She has no hope of finding them in the dark. There
are no other cars on the road. What can you suggest
to help Jane?
Answer: Take one nut from each
of the other wheels.
. A police detective suddenly
came upon an accident. On
either side of the highway were parked two cars, one belonging
to Mr. A, the other to Mr. B. Between them on the highway
was the dead body of Mr. C. He had been struck by a car.
"He did it, officer!" said Mr. B, pointing a finger at Mr. A.
"I saw him hit the poor man not more than two minutes
ago, just as I drove up." "No I didn't," said A. "I have
been
in that field picking wild berries for the past two hours."
How can the officer determine if B is telling the truth -
without asking a single question?
Answer: If B is telling the
truth both engines will be warm.
5. Underneath the Kingsville
highway is a drainage pipe just
wide enough for one person to crawl through. When a break
occurred one day, a supervisor sent two men to investigate.
Both men crawled into the pipe at opposite ends and each
came out at the other end from which he went in. How did
they manage to do this without widening the pipe?
Answer: They went through at
different times.
6. The man was shaking as he
told the detective what happened
to his wife: "She was having this terrible dream. We were on an
ocean cruise and the boat was sinking. All the lifeboats were
gone. A storm was coming. The dream must have seemed very
real because just as the captain shouted 'Abandon ship!' she
had a heart attack and died." "You are under arrest," said the
detective. Why?
Answer: If she had died as he
said, he would not have known
her dream.
. Lee is in jail in Guatemala.
The jail has triple locks on the
door; the walls are concrete; the floor is packed earth. In
the middle of the ceiling, three meters above Lee, is a skylight
just wide enough for a man to squeeze through. But there
is no furniture for Lee to stand on, and he is less than three
meters tall an can't reach the skylight. But Lee had an idea.
One night ha dug a hole in the floor and escaped through
the skylight. How?
Answer: He piled the earth until
he could reach the skylight.
8. Belinda was waiting for a
bus. The bus was late; the sky
clouded over and a downpour soaked the streets. Belinda
had no umbrella, no hat. She was nowhere near a canopy
or awning. Yet after a ten minute wait, when she got on the
bus, her hair was perfectly dry. Why?
Answer: She was inside a
building.
9. The keeper of a lighthouse
was getting ready to have a bath.
Suddenly the wind blew the door shut and locked him in.
When he turned the tap off, it came apart in his hands.
Water gushed into the room and rose rapidly. There were no
windows in the room, but in the ceiling there was a small air
vent 10 cm by 10 cm in size. How did the lighthouse keeper
save himself from drowning?
Answer: He pulled the plug in
the bathtub.
10. Erica drives a taxi. She
likes her job but she hates
passengers who talk. Whenever passengers begin to
talk, Erica points to her ears and mouth and shakes
her head. Her passengers usually believe that she is
deaf and mute and they stop talking. Only when they
arrive at their destinations do they realize that they
have been tricked. Why?
Answer: Erica could hear the
directions.
11. Two men are walking down a
street in the middle of a city.
Suddenly one of them pulls out a gun and shoots a woman.
The police arrested the man, but in court the judge said
"This is a clear case of murder. There were many witnesses.
You may go free because I can't send you to prison."
Answer: They are Siamese twins,
so the innocent twin
can't be sent to prison.
12. A man gets into his lift to
go to work one morning.
Before the lift reaches the ground floor he knows his wife
is dead. How?
Answer: The electricity goes out
for 15 minutes while he
is in the lift. His wife is upstairs on a life-support machine,
so she dies when the electricity goes out.
13. A man lives on the 22nd
floor of an apartment building.
Every morning he leaves his apartment, gets into the lift,
goes to the ground floor and goes to work. Every evening,
he comes home, gets into the lift, goes to the 14th floor,
gets out of the lift and walks up to his apartment on the
22nd floor. However, if someone is in the lift with him, he
goes directly to the 22nd floor. Why?
Answer: He is a midget and isn't
tall enough to reach
the button for the 22nd floor.
14. Every night at about 12
o'clock I get out of bed, go into the next
room, pick up the phone, dial a number and wait. Someone answers
"Alright." I put down the receiver, go back into the bedroom, get
into
bed and go to sleep. I do this every night. Why?
Answer: The man next door snores
so loudly that I can't get to sleep,
so I call him to wake him up long enough for me to fall asleep.
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