Ice Breakers for Adult ESL Classrooms Level B-1
- katemye
- Dec 30, 2024
- 2 min read
Ice Breakers for Adult ESL Classrooms Level B-1
In order to create a motivated and engaging atmosphere for students, it's important to start your
class out with ice breakers, especially in ESL courses. The type of ice breakers I will introduce here are discussion-based questions which will prompt your students to use their own personal experiences or
opinions to describe how they feel or understand the subject.
Normally, I like to begin this ice breaker by introducing the question that they should think about while watching a short ~5 minute video about the subject. This is an excellent way to gauge your students' comprehension, communication, and grammar skills. After the video, the teacher can model his or her own response. The teacher can also create a model on the board for them to fill in the blank and share with the class for some of the responses so that they are not so intimidated by the question. Afterwards, the teacher can then call on each student to participate so they can share their thoughts.
It’s important to not interrupt the flow of the speaker, but to wait at the end of the response to provide feedback on pronunciation, grammar, or any other errors you might pick up throughout the response. Remind your students to not only listen to the speakers in the video, but also how the speaker's frame their responses or dialogue to help prepare for the student’s own replies. Occasionally, you can throw in some trivia videos for the whole class to participate, while building confidence in simple topics they might already be familiar with.
On the next page are some videos on trivia along with discussion questions that have been successful in my adult ESL B-1 level class for a few terms now. Some of the videos I have shared are longer than 5 minutes, so feel free to stop the video icebreaker at any time.
Enjoy! ~*xo
~*k.ye October 2024
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Discussion Questions
1. What did you do this past weekend?
2. What are some tips you would give to your friends to study better?
3. Introduce yourself!
4. What's your favorite season and why?
~*k.ye October 2024
5.Do you like reading? Why or why not? What types of reading materials do you like to read? Magazines, Journals, Books, Poems?
Trivia
6. Guess the flags!
7. Guess the animals.
8. Guess the compound word.
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