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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activity that I learned from Carmen Andrews-Sanchez via Kristin Duncan’s blog (update: her ‘TPRS Teacher’ blog is no longer active).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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Fan N Pick Forms
Fan ‘n’ pick is one of my favorite Kagan structures, but it is also one of the most complicated ones for my students to learn. After several years of painful trial-and-error structure intros to six or seven groups of students, I think that I have finally developed a system that works. The key? Use forms.…
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Kinesthetic letters
I made 18 reusable sets of letters that can be used to practice the alphabet, spelling, and vocabulary year-round. 18 sets is enough for even my biggest classes to have one set per set of partners. Print out this document (kinesthetic letters ), then use the two sheets that printed to create a front-to-back copy…
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First Day Seating
First, Second Partner Race
This is a little game for students to play with a partner (MAYBE a group of three) to review the events of a story. We used it for Chapter 7 of El Nuevo Houdini, since the students seem to get confused about who went where when and when who called whom about what. Phew! Start…
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Jigsaw Puzzle
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…
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