Games Your Students Play - Concentration 64

I have several students who spend their lunchtimes in my room, and I like to watch them and see what games they play, either verbally or on their phones, in their downtime. It tells me what they like to do, and that means I can sometimes design activities around the things they do in their free time. Our students are always more willing to do something compelling to them, and nothing is more compelling than stuff they do in their lives of their own volition. When we can incorporate our students' lives into our classrooms, we not only interest our students further, lending to their progress and buy-in, but we become more in tune with them as people, too. Something some of my older students like to do is a clapping categories game called Concentration 64 that lends itself BEAUTIFULLY to a language class.

It's been a while - using one activity for many things

For those of us teaching multiple levels, it can feel like a struggle to come up with distinct lesson plans for each level. That isn't always necessary, though - many activities can be adapted to whatever level you want, up to and including literature. It just has to be embedded, and then you can keep the passages you're reading consistent throughout levels, scaffolding up appropriately with each level.

For example, last week my Latin III and IV students were reviewing some subjunctive and passive structures, while my twos are working on demonstratives and relatives - very different ideas. I wanted to do an interactive activity with both levels, but I didn't want to design two separate activities.