TEFL Warmer for Adults: Stop the Bus!

A perfect TEFL warmer for teenagers and adults (but you can always use this classroom warmer with older children, if have a bigger vocabulary and better writing skills. This warmer for English classes is just great to bring a tired group of ESL students back in the game!

‘Stop the Bus’ is a classic ESL game which is useful for reading through the text book, quick thinking and and will give you good distance in the classroom (excuse the pun!)

What to Do in Class

Put your ESL students into small teams of 3-4 students, or even pairs if you have a smaller ESL teens or adults class. Have your English students sat around separate tables or in small circles on the floor. Each team need a piece of paper and some pens or pencils.

When you're ready, write a BIG letter on the board, for example, 'T' and shout 'Go!'

Now ‘Stop the Bus’ really gets crazy!!

The teams now must write as many words as they can beginning with the letter 'T', or whatever letter you wrote on the whiteboard.

At any given point, ANY student can shout out 'STOP THE BUS!' and everyone in the classroom must immediately put down their pens and stop writing. Go around and check how many words each team has written and discount any words which are repeated. The team with the most words spelled correctly is the winner!

Students usually call out 'Stop the Bus' when they think their team has got a lot of words and feel that they can't be caught, but sometimes it backfires and another team has more! A quality TEFL warmer for teens and adults, or older children!