Here is another idea brought to you by the seductively fun Deb Abshier. She brought a version of this activity to share with our class on Wednesday night, and I love it! The possibilities are endless, but it is very important that you set it up correctly. (MAKE SURE YOU CLICK HERE TO READ THIS POST…
Read MoreFirst Person Practice
Watch out, world! I’m about to post a string of seductively fun ideas from the brilliant mind of Mrs. Debra Abshier! She is a Spanish teacher at another middle school in our district, and not only is she a fountain of ideas, but she is HILARIOUS. If you attended the ACTFL Conference this year, you…
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Spoons for Spanish
Have you ever played the game “Spoons” at a party? This was one of my favorite games throughout high school and college. We played it backstage at all of our school plays, in the lunchroom, in our dorm rooms, in the evenings when I lived in Mexico, at holiday family gatherings…whenever we could! The games…
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BINGO! as a springboard to writing
This is my attempt at legitimizing a fun activity (BINGO) that doesn’t actually help students learn language. BINGO works well for review, as a P.A.T. option, or for a sub plan activity… but language acquisition? The value is about ZERO. Before you play BINGO There are three things that you’ll need to do before class…
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Rumors lesson plan
We are really focusing on the past tense with my Spanish 2 classes. We started with a Weekend Chat / Card Talk style activity to focus on the word ‘fue’ (went), which you can read about here. Teaching “said” in Spanish class Moving on from ‘fue‘, today we started focusing on the high frequency word…
Read MoreLa bolsa mágica
I came up with this game as a way to practice the term “saca” (takes out) as part of the ¡Saca el boleto! story to prep students to read Pobre Ana Chapter 3, but I think that I need to just use it all the time because my students have never been so engaged! It…
Read MoreP.A.T. Games
Here are two great games to use for Preferred Activity Time that I found on the Spanish Playground blog: 1, 2, 3, Calabaza – Similar to “Red Light, Green Light”; A great game to play while the weather is still nice enough to go outside! If you are not a Spanish teacher, you could pick any…
Read MoreThe Name Game, but not…
I’m sure that everyone has played this game as the ‘name game’ at some training that they’ve attended in the past. Everyone stands in a circle, and one person introduces him or herself. The next person introduces him or herself, then has to recite (from memory) the names of each of the people that have…
Read MoreWrite, Draw, Pass extension
Why I didn’t think of this before, I’ll never know…but I realized this week while playing Write, Draw, Pass with my students that I can get lots of reps and stories out of what they’ve written–duh! I tell students to write simple, amusing, short sentences. This means that I end up with a lot of…
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Trading Up
This game will take you two days to play. It is designed to practice the structures “I/you have” and “is worth more than”. Day One – Explain rules and give out paperclips: Give each student a paper clip (or some other small, meaningless object). Tell them that their homework is to “Trade Up”. They need…
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