Video tip: Five words

Are you sometimes stuck for a good warmer in the first few minutes of a lesson? Then watch Dagmar’s tip here Five words on how to exploit students’ vocabulary. And you can be sure that your students will all start talking!

Tip: You can use the five-word idea for other activities:

• Ask students to think of a room in their house. Then ask each student to write down five things that are in that room. For a B1 class for example, pillow, mattress, duvet, clothes hanger, wardrobe would be found in the bedroom. Ask each student to read out their list of words and ask the rest of the class to guess the room.

• Ask each student to think of a shop – a chemist, a butcher, a greengrocer, a baker, a café, a clothes shop for example and then ask them to think of five things you can buy in the shop. For example, steak, liver, ham, chicken and veal are things you can buy at the butcher.

• Ask each student to think of a country and write down five words associated with that country.

• Ask students to think of a recipe and write down five of the ingredients.
• All of these short, five-word activities can be used to fill a five-minute gap in a fun and focussed way!