I know there are many warm up exercises- such as air writing of words of one member of a group with guessing by his team mates (like air guitar). I have just been going with the one that I was trained with ask "How are you", "What is the date", "What is day","What is the weather" etc. It just takes too long with the Year 5 and 6s in the elementary school that I met every week with free choice of teaching. They just aren't very responsive. What is a good alternative for getting them thinking and talking? Its hard to get effective home room teachers input on this (or anything). The teachers don't know their children in this area- the younger students class's year teacher (I have a different one each week) keeps telling me that they need an easy food exercise and they find it far too easy every time with the basic Western foods.