Back writing is a fun game with a few different variations (see below) for pairs or groups to review writing and understanding the shapes of the alphabet.

The next letter game is played in teams of 4 at the maximum to practice alphabetical order with the goal being trying to recall as quickly as possible the next letter. A perfect warm up for when junior high school first grade are learning how to use the dictionary.

This activity uses competition to make writing the alphabet fun. It should probably be paired with (and done after) a practice worksheet.

This is a great way for the young students to expend all that excited energy - fair warning: you'll need a lot of energy too!

Animal groups is an activity that uses the animal sounds as a way to communicate a student's agreement.

Birthday groups gets students walking around and saying the month they were born in while listing to other's answers and deciding if a group should be made. Basically, it's practicing the months focusing on the student's own birthday.

A classic for practicing numbers is the count around the circle game. Easy in concept, but because students tend to learn numbers once then not have much chance to use them after that, they fall out of practice. For that reason, count around the circle is also a good review warm-up for any lesson with many variations.

Criss-cross or tate-yoko as it is known to most Japanese junior high students is a simple junior high warm-up game where you can avoid questions or may have to answer depending on if you are in the row or column of the person in the spotlight at that moment.

Students ask each other about what they have in their fridge at home, right now. A mundane daily recall activity for all us home cooks but in the English class this becomes a fun thing for students to ask each other about. This activity also includes writing the English words.

Students hide some stationary behind their back and their partners guess what it is.

Students challenge their partner to see who can say the most things. The person who can't think of something to say within 5 seconds loses and the game is over.

This blackboard writing challenge works best in small to medium sized classes. Students are running around, writing letters on the blackboard, and competing against the other team(s) so there's a lot of movement and a lot of energy. Everyone loves this game!

Fruit basket is a wonderful game for reviewing vocabulary in elementary school English lessons. Wonderful because the students know the rules and wonderful because they love to play it (obviously not the older ones). With one less chair, the game revolves around changing where you sit while trying not to be the last one left without a seat.

Being able to answer any "How do you...?" question requires many different grammar forms. This activity let's students practice asking the single form question without getting bogged down in the grammar of all the possible answers.

The gesture game seems to have fallen out of fashion around my neck of the woods but I think it can still serve a purpose. The gesture game activity is simple and requires no extra preparation so can be used as planned or on the fly when you need to fill in an extra 5 or 10 minutes.

Guess the number is a fun game, useful for practicing numbers one to one hundred. The good thing about this game is it gets the kids to think of the numbers they want to say in English.

In this activity, students decide how they are going to help the ALT. They discuss it and answers are written down. Great for a review warm-up focusing on using "I will...".

In this game, the teacher's pen (and other stationary) is missing. Luckily, the students know where it is and can direct the teacher to it.

Chanting is a simple drilling tool that adds cadence (usually by clapping) to repetition to liven it up. For any hip-hop fans - try taking it one step further and adding a beat to make it even more interesting.

The students have a set time, say 30 seconds, to say something and pass the eraser back and forward in pairs. When the timer runs down, the student left holding the eraser loses. No preparation needed for this junior high warm up activity.