On the Board: 200 Fast, Fun & Easy Warmer, Filler and Fast-Finisher Activities

By Walton Burns

On the Board contains over 200 proverbs, brain teasers, riddles, puzzles, and jokes, all collected, classroom-tested, and curated over my 16 years of teaching ESL & EFL. These activities are the easiest, no-prep, fun ways to kick off your class.

Pick out a riddle or brain teaser or proverb, put it up on the board, and get students thinking and working as soon as class begins. They work as perfect warmers or do-nows because they are fun and engaging, simple enough that students can do them on their own, and they can easily lead into the class theme. You can also use them as fillers, closers, or put them in your fast-finisher file.

Do students walk into your classroom, throw their bags on their seats, and then wander over to their buddy and start chatting? When it's time to start class, are you forced to shout to be heard over the chatter? Do you hate watching students pull out their books and pencils as you're starting class? Do you modulate your voice to be heard over the backpack zippers, powerbar wrappers, and coffee cup sips? On the Board takes care of that by getting students in their seats and working before the bell even rings. My students love them. Your students will too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alphabet Publishing
• Release date: Sep 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997762822

Walton Burns

As a teacher I am a teacher and materials writer from Connecticut. I fell in love with teaching English in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu, an island chain in the South Pacific which was the basis for Bali Ha'i in South Pacific. I had the most amazing class of Francophone Melanesian students who were working to complete their high school degrees. They inspired me and led me to love teaching. Since then I've worked around the world and taught a diverse range of students from Russian oil executives who needed to improve their English for business, to Kazakh scholarship recipients off to study in American universities, to Afghani high school students on the FLEX exchange program and middle-school children taking an extra-curricular speaking class. As a writer I began selling lesson plans and activities on my blog in 2007. There appeared to be an actual and growing demand for my work. So I began seeking out some small professional gigs, mostly helping fellow teachers develop lessons for their classes. My school began using me for more and more lesson plan development and editing. After winning a few lesson plan contests, I came to the attention of the Nick Robinson Agency and was very successful there. I continue to work with Nick and ELTJam, as well as independently. I publish my own books and lesson plans, write for publishers, copy-edit, and design activities and lesson plans for language schools, including online lessons as well as face to face classes. Clients for writing and editing have included Oxford University Press, Macmillan, Pearson, Compass Publishing, 2LTI Testing and New Horizons Language Schools. Since 2015, I have been part of the leadership team of the Materials Writing Interest Section of the TESOL Association, the international association for English language professionals.