7 Short and Simple Cool Down Ideas

It’s the middle of winter, so if today isn’t the best day to share my favourite cool downs, I don’t know what is! I think warm ups are far more popular, but the exercises at the end of the lesson are equally important as they help students remember the things they’ve learned that day and close the lesson in a friendly, relaxed and enjoyable manner. Below you will find my favourite cool down ideas – maybe you’ll find them as useful as they were for my own students.

The good thing about the ideas below is that you only need pen and paper – and that’s it, enjoy!

Picture dictation

It’s a very simple activity, where one student draws a picture and then describes it to the other student… who has to draw whatever he hears, but without looking at the original picture! It’s really funny, creative and boosts not only memory (if you ask your students to include the words they used during the lesson), but also communicative skills.

Visual vocabulary

One of the funniest activities I know. Ask your students to make some visuals for the words they’ve learnt during the lesson, for example:

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This will boost their long-term memory, but you may collect their pictures and use them for the next classes, maybe as flashcards or maybe as warm-ups.

20 Questions

It’s a very simple game, where one person thinks of a word and the whole group has to ask questions (maximum 20) that will help them determine the thing the first student thinks of. You can enjoy this activity in the whole classroom, smaller groups or even pairs. Apart from practising communication skills, you may give an extra challenge and ask students to include some grammar constructions they have learned.

Chain story

This activity is perfect to revise the vocabulary and create the story at the same time. You start the story (e.g. Once upon a time I met a talking cat.) and the students, one by one, have to continue the story, but they need to include any word they’ve learnt that day. It’s one of the funniest activities as it requires quick thinking (after all the story has to make sense). It’s also useful when it comes to developing communication skills and practising grammar and vocabulary.

Quick scrabble

We don’t have time for traditional scrabble, but we may create our own game. Here students work in pairs. One student starts by writing a word horizontally, and the other writes another word diagonally, but needs to use at least one letter of the first word (just like in the crossword). You may use it later in the classroom and ask students to write clues to their words (and then, during revision, use it as an exercise for another group). It’s a great activity for practising vocabulary,

Miming

It’s a brilliant activity for younger students, but I’ve met quite a number of adults who were also enjoying this exercise. You need to ask students to mime a word or a phrase they have learnt during the class, so that other students can guess it. The student who guesses correctly gets a point. You may also divide your class into two teams and make it a competition. It’s a nice game to revise vocabulary, but also practise some abstract thinking.

The longest sentence

Ask your students to write on the board as many of the words they remember from the lesson… and then ask them to work in pairs and make a sentence including as many words from the board as they can only think of. It’s a nice exercise to work on vocabulary and writing skills, but the sentences you’ll read will probably be quite funny.

As you can see, these simple exercises are short, easy and definitely funny. They are great not only as nice class finishers, but they help your students relax and have fun before they leave your enjoyable classes and move on.