Practicing indirect statement

Indirect statements can be tough for the kids to get a hang of - it requires verb shifts and an interesting understanding of time relativity. We know, though, that comprehensible, compelling repetition is what helps us acquire language, so with that in mind, here are some ways we've practiced indirect speech:

1. I put a silly sentence on the board. Students are in groups. We circle the sentence and make sure students understand what is going on. I give them a subject and a head verb (like "Paulus memoria tenuit), and their job is to turn the whole thing into an indirect statement (e.g. "Paulus Claram infantes quaerere memoria tenuit"). When the group feels they've got it, a runner goes to the center of the room, where I have put a bell, to ding the bell. The whole class stops talking and listens. The student gives us their sentence. If they're right, we applaud, I ask some questions, sometimes we act it out, and we move on to the next sentence.

2. The class is divided into five groups. Each group has as many small white boards as the number of people in their group...plus one. On the extra white board...
-group one makes a list of accusative nouns.
-group two makes a list of infinitives.
-group three makes another list of accusative nouns.
-group four makes a list of ablative nouns.
-group five makes a list of things you can do with your brain.

I ask a student who is going to be in this sentence, and they typically offer me something entertaining (Magnus Pater, Iohannes Cena, etc). Then I consult each group in turn for a word of their variety. Eventually we end up with what's basically a constructed madlib that looks like this...

Magnus Pater regem devoravisse carcerem oculis censuit. 

We make sure everyone understands the sentence, and then each person on their own board draws the sentence. We show our boards, and I take individual boards and show them. One of the things I like to do with this is point at the parts of the picture and have the kids tell me what part of the sentence that is, such that we end up reconstructing the sentence together.

Rinse and repeat.

I've also done this with lines out of poetry and just removed certain forms, such that the line of poetry basically becomes a mad lib.

3. The kids get a sentence form, like: ______________ (aliquis) ____________________ (aliquid) proposuit, sed __________________ (aliquis) ___________________ (aliquid) sprevit.

This sentence form is under a picture. Groups work together to fill in the blanks to describe what's going on in the picture. (the link goes to a powerpoint i recently used for this.)

Addition: I sometimes give a quiz that goes along with this, while we're doing this. After we've done each picture, I ask one or two questions about what has been established to have happened in that picture.

Three Things You Can Do With A Bell

I have a small metal bell. It was given to me my first year of teaching by our then-county foreign language coordinator, and it's one of my favorite classroom tools. Here are some things you can do with a bell:

1. Put students in pairs. Each student has a different job (ex: one signs and one says what the other is signing; one reads and one translates; one describes and one draws; one reads a text with errors in and the other points out the lies). Ding your bell. Students switch seats and switch jobs.

2. Speed dating. Students talk to each other on a topic, and when the bell rings, they find a new partner.

3. Bell races. Students are in groups around the perimeter of the room, and the bell is in the center. The groups are asked to consider something together, and when the group has an answer, a runner is sent to ding the bell, at which point everyone else in the room quiets down and listens to that person.
An example of that one can be found at number 1 at the link here.