Play “Go fish!” in language classes

Instead of playing with a deck of cards, play this familiar children’s game with original cards filled with images or text as an opportunity to to get students speaking in low-risk situation even as they continue interacting with a text (’cause it’s all about the input, baby!). Before you play Go Fish Prepare students for…

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Word Race Stories

Generate comprehensible input and provide opportunities for output from a traditional vocabulary-review game that is played with a partner! This activity makes for a great sub plan component, even when your sub doesn’t speak the target language. PREPARE THE WORD RACE STORY WORKSHEET To get started, download the game template here! Once you’ve got the…

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Pencil Grab True-False game

Pencil Grab is a super simple activity that I learned from Carmen Andrews-Sanchez via Kristin Duncan’s blog (update: her ‘TPRS Teacher’ blog is no longer active). Pencil Grab requires zero preparation, is easy to play, and it’s fun for students! Update: You may also know this activity as “The Marker Game“! What is Pencil Grab?…

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Output

One common question that I was asked in my sessions at iFLT ’14 was, “I thought that our goal is to provide students with comprehensible input…so why do so many of these activities contain output?” Great question! Is output bad? No comprehension based teacher thinks that output is bad. Output is a good thing and one of the end…

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