Although I am not teaching this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the last few weeks of school as my former colleagues muscle through the last two weeks here in Anchorage. As a middle school teacher, the best adjective for those last two weeks was CRAZY! The amount of daylight here in Alaska combined with the anticipation of summer made for some pretty wild days.
At my school, our last week of school consisted of two days of finals, one day of class to review the corrected finals (ha, ha, ha–if you’ve seen my finals, you know that it is quite impossible to grade 175 of them overnight…if you haven’t, click here for some examples), and a shortened class on the last day of school. I always tried to spend those last two days pumping loads of language into my students in a last-ditch effort to flood their brains with comprehensible input before they disappeared for the summer! They were a great time to use language games (click here for some ideas), because students could have fun while still being exposed to and producing the language.
One language game that I’ve always enjoyed is Write, Draw, Pass. The kids have a lot of fun with it, it is a great source for discussion, and there are many possible extensions. To use it at the end of the school year, consider having students fill in Box #1 with something that they are going to do this summer. To save time and ensure that students see correct language at least initially in the activity, I wrote 30 summer plan sentences and included them in this (free) document. Download it and stash it away for the end of your school year! I included English translations of the 30 sentences so that teachers of other languages can adapt the activity for their classes.
I love your Write Draw Pass activity. We play it in my class all the time. I had a very bright student name it “DibujOraciones” which is what I call it in my own classroom.
Kids these days! Too clever for their own good 😉 I love it and am officially going to steal it! Thanks for sharing!
Feel free! I have stolen plenty of your ideas as I am just beginning to get into TPRS (just did my first training last July).
End of year…flooding them with CI…I promised my kids that then realized I really didn’t know how to do it! 10 pm last night I thought of YOU, researched on TPT, and came out with La Siesta lesson plans! Today when the bell rang signalling the end of 4th period, I heard a “nuh-uh!” Then 3 boys incredulously commented as they were leaving “It felt like I just came in here and sat down and then the bell rang!” I am sad to say that there haven’t been enough of those days for me this year. It was delightful! Thank you for your resources!
Oh I am so glad to hear it!! Tomorrow you should celebrate by practicing the tradition of the siesta in Spanish class 😉