According to "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English," warm-up means to perform or speak first at an event, so that the poeple listening are relaxed or excited before the main singer, speaker, etc. comes on.
When teaching, warm-ups are really useful to make the students feel comfortable with the environment, and they make them forget, just for a moment, the main purpose of the class. But also, they are used to cheer up the students who are feeling lazy, sad, or dissapointed at the very beginning of the class. Also, shyness is one of the most common feelings that students show when they are taking a class in which they must participate and speak in order to learn.
Warm-ups such as "Yarn Web," "Last Name Adjective," "People to people," "All you can write" and others are really funny and entertaining for any level in which you are teaching. But, you may take into account the quantity of knowledge that your students may have. In a Basic English class for example, you can do some of these activities, but it may be a little challenging for students that don't know anything about this new language. However, they may have listened to a pair of words in a movie, a song or in a magazine. So that, some of these activites can be useful. In the case of advanced levels, any of these activities are just entertaining and exciting because at this level, they have increased their vocabulary in order to participate and give multiple choices.
When I participated in these activities, in some of them I didn't know what to expect. Some of them were new for me, and I haven't done it before. But as soon as I received the necessary instructions for each one, I knew what to do.
When I participated in the warm-up "Last Name Adjective," I could notice that everybody were laughing because of the adjectives that all people were using to describe themselves. Also, people could know something that their partner likes to do. Furthermore, I liked the activity because it's a good way of introducing people.
I would have changed the way we wrote our names. The recycled paper was nice, but I would have given them a color paper and a piece of masking tape for them to paste the piece of paper in their shirts. In that way, I would have used the piece of paper to refer to them in the class. For example: "Funny George can you give me an example of this type of sentence?"
When I participated in the warm-up "All you can write," I liked that we could test our ability to write fast and to remember words in English, and I realized that under preasure, you forget about every word you know. It was funny, but noisy.
I would have changed the participation method on the board. So that, all people would have participated. A person would have written a different word on the board, since we were in a line it would have been more funny to run and write words. Also, I would have tried to do the activity on a page, and I would have count the letters by myself; so that, I would have check spelling and writing quality.
Warm-ups are really funny. They cheer up students, and they make feel students comfortable in the environment. They are used at the beginning at the class. But, I would had a "Warm-up B" just in case the class turns boring for students. I like to use technology a lot, and if I'm using the projector to teach the class, I would include a funny quote or a funny picture in the middle just to make students feel good. Also, a five-minutes-activity can be useful to keep the class interesting.
