 Top 5 Icebreakers for New TEFL Teachers As you have learned during your TEFL certification course, a good lesson starts with an engage or warm-up phase. This usually consists of a fun and interesting activity to get your students going and speaking in English. For new teachers, it's often these more casual moments of a class that are a challenge because of their lack of teaching experience. However, these top 5 icebreakers for new TEFL teachers will help you to get your class energized and ready for your lesson. 1. Two truths and a lie. This is a great activity for your very first lesson with a new class. Basically, the students each write down 3 statements. Two statements are true, but one of them is a lie. Next, the students either present the statements to each other or to you, the teacher. Your students or you must then guess which of the statements was the lie. It's a great activity to play with the new class because you can learn something about your students. For example, you can ask them to write down 3 statements about themselves and then find out which one is not true. At the same time, you can also join in and tell your students 3 statements about you and they need to guess which one is a lie. This usually lightens the mood and your students can learn something about their classmates and their new teacher. 2. ABC Word Chain. This activity is ideal for building vocabulary and can be played with all levels of students. The teacher chooses a topic and asks a student for a word that fits into that topic. For example, the topic could be animals and a student says lion. Next, the students take turns building a word chain by looking at the final letter of the last word in the row, here lion, the letter end, and choosing a word that begins with this letter and also fits into the given category. So, in the case of our animal word chain, it could be lion, newt, turtle, elephant, and so on. Play this for a couple of minutes at the beginning of your lesson to give each student a chance to think and speak in English. 3. Positive, negative, crazy. Similar to the activity at number 2, the teacher writes a category or topic on the board and then passes a hot potato around the classroom. When the teacher yells positive, the student with the hot potato in their hand needs to form a positive sentence that fits into the topic on the board, such as I love taking a walk in the forest within my free time as the topic. To say negative, the students need to make a negative sentence, for example, I don't like playing baseball but my brother makes me play with him anyways. If you yell out the third option crazy, the student holding the hot potato can create a sentence however they like. 4. Would you rather? This activity usually results in laughter and a good and positive start to your class. If the students write down questions starting with would you rather and present them to one another in class, for example, would you rather eat worms or bugs? You can then follow up with white, getting the students to make longer statements and expressing their opinion in English. 5. Finish the sentence. Very easy and fun to play is the finish the sentence game. Here, the teacher simply writes the beginning of a sentence on the board and has the students finish the sentence in their own words on a sheet of paper. After a few minutes, the teacher asks the students to read out their answers to the class. To make it a little more interesting, you can prepare a variety of sentence beginnings beforehand and ask students one by one to complete the sentence without writing it down on paper. Are you ready to teach English abroad? These five ice breakers are ideal to start your ESL lesson and get your students thinking and talking in English. Apply now for your TEFL TESOL certification course and start teaching in a matter of months. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.