An Unusual EFL Warmer: The Toilet Roll
There are many reasons for wanting to start your EFL class with a warmer. Students may be reluctant to speak English at first in your classes through shyness or a lack of confidence. This is an unusual EFL warmer which you can use in your teenage or adult classes. You can also use this warmer in kids classes, too - you just need to tweak it a little.
Check out our YouTube video below to see how to run this EFL warmer
How to play this EFL warmer
Bring a toilet roll to class. Make it one new from a packet. A colleague of mine brought in a half-used one from his own bathroom and, unsurprisingly, no one wanted to touch it! Using a brand new toilet roll for this EFL warmer will avoid this.
In class, unwrap your toilet roll and ask each student to take either one sheet, two sheets or three sheets of paper. Don’t explain anything yet, Simply ask each student to choose between 1-3 sheets of toilet paper from your toilet roll.
Once each student has taken their chosen number of sheets, explain that each student must say one thing about themselves for every sheet they have taken! If a student took one sheet, they say one thing about themselves. If they took two sheets. then they say two things about themselves and so on.
Have each student say something about themselves in turn and then move on with the rest of your class. Easy! This is an unusual warmer for EFL and ESL classes.
Alternative ways of playing
The Toilet Roll warmer won’t particularly work well (or not as well) if you have a very big class. If you have more than 15-20 students in your class, then put all the students who took one sheet together in a group. Put all the students who took two sheets in a group, and all students who took three sheets in a group.
Now get them to mingle telling each other about themselves or swapping stories. At the end, get everyone seated again and ask some students who they spoke to and what they found out.
The Toilet Roll: an EFL warmer for young learners
This needn’t just restrict this EFL warmer to teens and adults. You can also use this EFL warmer for kids!
Have your students say a word you’ve been studying recently per sheet they have taken. This could be a colours, toys, animals, places, whatever. Teaching slightly more advanced kids? Get them to introduce themselves or give a sentence per sheet they’ve taken. You can easily use this EFL warmer for kids classes, too!
By Stuart Allen