I like hanging around stationeries and toy shops and I always discover a way to use some of the stuff out there as a possible teaching tool in my class (I wonder if this is kind of weird:)). This time, I saw the sweet soft cubes in the photo. First, I thought they were dice, but then I realized that they were ‘foam stamps’.  When I was a child, we used to cut potatoes and colour them to stamp. These stamps are cool, but they seem to limit the creativity with the ready – made shapes on them, but of course that’s another story:) Anyways, have a look at my activity. It can be used both as an ice-breaker and a warmer in your class.

ICE, DICE and SMILES

Level / Age: Adaptable for all age groups and levels.

Time: 5 – 10 minutes

Procedure: – For each shape on the dice, provide a question (on the board or on a handout).

- Put the Ss into groups of 4 or 5.

- Each group is given a different dice with different shapes on them.

- Students  throw the dice in turns and answer the question referring to the shape on the dice.

- After a couple of turns, students can swap the dice and try out the new questions.

Here is a possible set of questions  (Pre-Intermediate level):

Notes:

* You may ask your students to create questions for each shape.

* You can make your own dice and create your own shapes using a piece of cardboard.

* If you buy a set of foam stamps, you should add two shapes for each, because they have only four shapes.

* You may provide more than one question for each shape.

* Keep your dice somewhere safe to use them in another activity later on.

Other possible ideas for the shapes:

* Answers (in different tenses) to make up the questions

* Time expressions to make sample sentences with the correct tense

* Vocabulary themes

* Imperatives to be ordered

* Tongue twisters to be repeated

* Names of the songs to be repeated

* Words to be rhymed

* Synonyms / Antonyms

Hope your students will enjoy the icebreaking dice activity:) Have a fab academic year full of excitement and success!

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