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Activity
Warm up activities

While We Wait

Jasmina Najjar

Jasmina Najjar

Maha Bali

Maha Bali

Make use of the 5-10 minutes before class time or if you give a break in the middle of class.

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Activity feature image
Tech needed: Music sharing, On-screen annotation
Accessibility: Visual, Auditory
Duration: 5-30 mins
Student preparation: None
Educator preparation: Minimal

ACTIVITY PURPOSE

Make the most of the 5–10 minutes before class starts or during a break to create a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere. These small moments can encourage timely attendance, spark informal conversations, and help build a sense of community, whether you’re teaching online or in person.

USEFUL FOR

  • Making use of transitional time before or during class
  • Welcoming students as they arrive at different times
  • Supporting students who may be shy or hesitant to jump into academic discussions
  • Building rapport gradually in both short and longer courses
  • Adding energy or calm, depending on the activity you choose

PREPARATION

Not too much. If using music or coloring pages, you may want to prepare ahead of time, but it can also take about 2 minutes to find something suitable if you don’t have time to prepare ahead of time!

INSTRUCTIONS

In the video, we discuss the following ideas:

  • Share music (not too loud) so students hear it when they come in. You can encourage students to sing along, dance along, or just talk over the music. It can spark an interesting music-sharing conversation.
  • Tell students you will discuss favorite movies and TV series in those few minutes before class and invite them to join that conversation.
  • Share your screen with a coloring page and encourage students to use the annotation function of Zoom to start coloring together – this can be relaxing, and people can still chat while coloring together, without the pressure of cameras focused on their face.
  • Encourage students to do some stretching exercises as they may have several video calls that day and forget to do that!

DURATION

These things should not take more than 5 or 10 minutes to do.

ADAPTATIONS AND EXAMPLES

Obviously, you can use the time before class to just be available for students in case they want to talk about anything else – rather than filling the time with other activities; but these are just some variations that may encourage students who would not naturally come in and chat on their own.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

For coloring: use a video tool that allows screen-sharing and annotation for online sessions, or provide printed coloring pages for in-person classes.
For music sharing: any video tool that allows sharing computer sound.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Do you have any suggestions? Please share them in the comments section below.

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