Wheelofnames.com is one of my favorite websites. You can customize what items are on the wheel (and the colors, if that's your jam. it is my jam.), and you can save those wheels to use later. I have one for each of my classes, and then periodically, classes and I will build one together.
One of the ones we recently built had numbers on it. I picked about twelve people and asked them qui numerus acceptissimus tibi est? and they told me. This is hilarious, because they didn't know what they were being used for, and Mark's favorite number is 18, which is Known.
Everyone was mad at Mark about five minutes later.
In any case, I now had 1, 4, 18, 12, etc. I had the kids stand up in pairs facing each other and gave them a topic. (you could also have a wheel of topics if you want to leave it to chance)
We spun the wheel, and the wheel told them how many items in that category they had to come up with. There are virtues both to giving them the topic and then spinning the wheel, and to spinning the wheel and then giving them the topic. I encourage you to experiment and decide which you like best.
Depending on the level of chaos you thrive in in your classroom, you can have the pairs:
-shout their answers at each other in an attempt to get the requisite number of items before their partner (encourages both hilarity and quick thinking in the TL, but necessarily discourages listening)
-work together to come up with the requisite number of answers in a set amount of time/before other pairs.
Having shouted at each other for X number of seconds or until it sounds like they're winding down (my usual method of deciding when they're done), I pick a few pairs and ask them to share their best answers. You can just accept those answers as is, or it can lead to more PQA/circling/input.
The topics can be anything. In Latin two, they had (among other things) letters of the alphabet (we had a gimme to start :P), body parts, things you do in the baths, jobs, food words, and - I kid you not - things you can do to save energy in the home.
We did not spend time in any unit discussing "ways to save energy in the home." But you bet they know things like "turn off the lights" and "close the fridge," and they've never been asked to apply it in that way. It allows them to stretch and realize just what they can talk about. It's a good warm up or brain break, and the kids get a kick out of doing it.
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Scene Charades
Warning: some prep (though not a huge amount) involved.
I love charades. It's great for discrete vocab rehearsal, it's funny, and it gets people involved.
But it's really only good for discrete vocab rehearsal. Sometimes you get to a point, especially at the upper levels, where vocab is great, but sometimes it's odd, or you've got it in a chunk and you'd like kids to be able to use it outside that chunk. So try this:
Write one or two sentence scenes that are funny, divorced from the text you're having the kids read, and involve the vocabulary you want them to practice.
[Here were some of mine:
Scaena: femina diem nubendi petit, sed vir territus est. (a woman is looking for a wedding day, but the man is terrified)
Scaena: Vir it cibum petitum, sed subito homine pulchro obstiupit. E rupe cadit. (a man goes looking for food, but he is suddenly stupefied by a beautiful person. he falls off a cliff.)
Scaena: Puero ire ad scholas non licet nisi scutum suum inveniat. (a boy is not allowed to go to school unless he finds his shield.)
Scaena: Femina rem magni ponderis tollere conatur, sed braccia ei desunt. (a woman tries to lift a heavy thing, but her arms are missing.)
I'm rehearsing the vocab I bolded for you (which isn't bolded on the work I gave the kids), and I'm also getting in repetitions of certain grammatical structures I want them to hear more of (e.g. diem nubendi, nisi inveniat, it petitum).]
Cut the scenes you've typed up into strips and put them in a bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever.
Put your class in groups of three or four (I find more than four is just too many, and pairs isn't going to be enough for this activity). Instead of calling a single person up for this charades game, you're going to call the whole group. They'll draw one of the scenes out of the bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever. I gave them eleven seconds to figure out how they were going to act out the scene. They were allowed to make noise but not say words.
While they were doing the scene (which they had to do three times), the rest of the groups were busily conversing, trying to decide what the scene was. They knew they got
-1 point for describing the scene correctly
-2 points for using recent vocab
-3 points for hitting on the vocab I was targeting
-4 points for making me happy in some way with their descriptions (I like rewarding them for things I maybe couldn't have predicted they'd do)
After the third iteration of the scene, each group got to describe what they felt the scene was. Points are awarded after all descriptions have been said.
Then I read the actual scene to them, and we circled and asked some questions and made sure everyone understood.
Notate bene:
-I called on a different speaker from each group to tell me their group's description each round. That way, it wasn't always "Oh Grace does better than all of us," and it ensured that each of them had to be invested in the discussion.
Some scaffolds:
-you could have them write down their descriptions and read them out instead of discussing them
-you could choose not to put them in groups but have each kid write a description, and then call up 3-4 individual kids for each acting scene.
-you could give every group all the scenes typed out, and their job will be to find the correct one instead of devising a descriptions
I love charades. It's great for discrete vocab rehearsal, it's funny, and it gets people involved.
But it's really only good for discrete vocab rehearsal. Sometimes you get to a point, especially at the upper levels, where vocab is great, but sometimes it's odd, or you've got it in a chunk and you'd like kids to be able to use it outside that chunk. So try this:
Write one or two sentence scenes that are funny, divorced from the text you're having the kids read, and involve the vocabulary you want them to practice.
[Here were some of mine:
Scaena: femina diem nubendi petit, sed vir territus est. (a woman is looking for a wedding day, but the man is terrified)
Scaena: Vir it cibum petitum, sed subito homine pulchro obstiupit. E rupe cadit. (a man goes looking for food, but he is suddenly stupefied by a beautiful person. he falls off a cliff.)
Scaena: Puero ire ad scholas non licet nisi scutum suum inveniat. (a boy is not allowed to go to school unless he finds his shield.)
Scaena: Femina rem magni ponderis tollere conatur, sed braccia ei desunt. (a woman tries to lift a heavy thing, but her arms are missing.)
I'm rehearsing the vocab I bolded for you (which isn't bolded on the work I gave the kids), and I'm also getting in repetitions of certain grammatical structures I want them to hear more of (e.g. diem nubendi, nisi inveniat, it petitum).]
Cut the scenes you've typed up into strips and put them in a bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever.
Put your class in groups of three or four (I find more than four is just too many, and pairs isn't going to be enough for this activity). Instead of calling a single person up for this charades game, you're going to call the whole group. They'll draw one of the scenes out of the bowl/hat/cauldron/whatever. I gave them eleven seconds to figure out how they were going to act out the scene. They were allowed to make noise but not say words.
While they were doing the scene (which they had to do three times), the rest of the groups were busily conversing, trying to decide what the scene was. They knew they got
-1 point for describing the scene correctly
-2 points for using recent vocab
-3 points for hitting on the vocab I was targeting
-4 points for making me happy in some way with their descriptions (I like rewarding them for things I maybe couldn't have predicted they'd do)
After the third iteration of the scene, each group got to describe what they felt the scene was. Points are awarded after all descriptions have been said.
Then I read the actual scene to them, and we circled and asked some questions and made sure everyone understood.
Notate bene:
-I called on a different speaker from each group to tell me their group's description each round. That way, it wasn't always "Oh Grace does better than all of us," and it ensured that each of them had to be invested in the discussion.
Some scaffolds:
-you could have them write down their descriptions and read them out instead of discussing them
-you could choose not to put them in groups but have each kid write a description, and then call up 3-4 individual kids for each acting scene.
-you could give every group all the scenes typed out, and their job will be to find the correct one instead of devising a descriptions
Thursday, March 7, 2019
The Blessing of Useless Competition
This is something the great Justin Slocum Bailey taught me:
if kids can compete, and if it can be hilarious, that's a beautiful classroom tool.
I think about that approximately every other week.
How long can kids balance coins on their nose? Great question. No idea, but I can reinforce quamdiu that way.
Right now, we're talking about athletes and actors and other forms of entertainment, and I'm beginning to realize how much longer it takes to smush indirect speech into their brains than approximately everything else. So I'm using it a lot.
Check out my Latin II classes this week, which have been seventy minutes long (usually they're 52), and I keep looking at the clock and realizing the bell is going to ring in ten seconds, and I'm still on my warm-up (because they've dived into it, and it's beautiful).
1. Any super-well-known (notissimi) athletes in this room? Whom do you think is the best athlete in the room? Ask fifteen people that question, and they get fifteen repeats of quem athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censes?. They also, since I've written ___________m athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censeo on the board, get to say it without panicking about how it's said 15 times.
2. Narrow it down to two or three kids. Make them do ridiculous stuff. How long do you think Ian can stand on one foot? What's the heaviest thing you think Tyler can lift? We're blessed to have a pull-up bar on the field right outside my classroom, so you'd better believe the question "quotiens Latrellem se tollere posse censes?" came up. You'd better believe we trooped outside to see exactly how many times Latrell could do a pullup. (the answer is twenty. class went nuts. latrell --> very proud of himself. also mildly sore.) I can ask that question about twenty-five times. I can also ask it right before the pull-up bar. Who thinks Latrell can do four pull-ups? Three? Seven? Not even one?
That was yesterday.
Today: We're going to talk about actors. The class knows who its good actors are, because those are the kids who often volunteer to do it, and whom the class wants to see do it.
So we talk for a while about who we think the best actors are. (this question - the "who do you think is the best/strongest/whateverest XYZ - almost never gets old. i can ask the same style of question for days, and they don't care. my first period argued FOR AN HOUR about who the best actor in the history of the world is, and my first period cares about nothing. For what it's worth, they don't think it's Liam Hemsworth, but they have real feelings regarding Kevin Hart.)
I eventually settled on three actors, told the class we were going to do five scenes. (target vocab: scaenam agere; eadem) All the actors would do the same five scenes (in which I can also use target vocab like histrio, discedere, carcer). Imitate a hungry lion (personam suscipere). Imitate a person trying to get out of jail. Take on the role of a person thrown down by hope.
Increasingly, the kids' scenes are hysterical. The students love watching this, the actors get attention, and you get endless repetitions of whatever you want. I NEVER end this competition by deciding who wins, because you end up with potentially hurt feelings there. But you can ask questions like, "who do you think is the best lion," because that isn't an overall question. Or "who do you think is a dramatic actor/tragic actor/comic actor." Target vocab, target structures, repetition, no hurt feelings. We applaud everybody, the actors are heroes, and I have no idea where seventy minutes have gone, but man there's been a lot of really good input in the last seventy minutes. And that input has real emotional ties, and it's stuff the kids aren't going to forget.
As an aside...I made the terrible mistake of giving them the instruction personam mei suscipere. The children...they know me well. And heck if they didn't pretend, down to verbatim the Latin things I tell them every day, to be me. Turns out repetition works?
A word of warning on some of these: read your room. You want to make sure you set up competition that is entirely friendly and completely useless. If it's going to result in hurt feelings, kids being on the spot, or judginess, this is NOT the way to go. Sam can move an Oreo down his face like nobody's business. That is a good, solid, useless competition.
if kids can compete, and if it can be hilarious, that's a beautiful classroom tool.
I think about that approximately every other week.
How long can kids balance coins on their nose? Great question. No idea, but I can reinforce quamdiu that way.
Right now, we're talking about athletes and actors and other forms of entertainment, and I'm beginning to realize how much longer it takes to smush indirect speech into their brains than approximately everything else. So I'm using it a lot.
Check out my Latin II classes this week, which have been seventy minutes long (usually they're 52), and I keep looking at the clock and realizing the bell is going to ring in ten seconds, and I'm still on my warm-up (because they've dived into it, and it's beautiful).
1. Any super-well-known (notissimi) athletes in this room? Whom do you think is the best athlete in the room? Ask fifteen people that question, and they get fifteen repeats of quem athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censes?. They also, since I've written ___________m athletam optimum in hoc conclavi esse censeo on the board, get to say it without panicking about how it's said 15 times.
2. Narrow it down to two or three kids. Make them do ridiculous stuff. How long do you think Ian can stand on one foot? What's the heaviest thing you think Tyler can lift? We're blessed to have a pull-up bar on the field right outside my classroom, so you'd better believe the question "quotiens Latrellem se tollere posse censes?" came up. You'd better believe we trooped outside to see exactly how many times Latrell could do a pullup. (the answer is twenty. class went nuts. latrell --> very proud of himself. also mildly sore.) I can ask that question about twenty-five times. I can also ask it right before the pull-up bar. Who thinks Latrell can do four pull-ups? Three? Seven? Not even one?
That was yesterday.
Today: We're going to talk about actors. The class knows who its good actors are, because those are the kids who often volunteer to do it, and whom the class wants to see do it.
So we talk for a while about who we think the best actors are. (this question - the "who do you think is the best/strongest/whateverest XYZ - almost never gets old. i can ask the same style of question for days, and they don't care. my first period argued FOR AN HOUR about who the best actor in the history of the world is, and my first period cares about nothing. For what it's worth, they don't think it's Liam Hemsworth, but they have real feelings regarding Kevin Hart.)
I eventually settled on three actors, told the class we were going to do five scenes. (target vocab: scaenam agere; eadem) All the actors would do the same five scenes (in which I can also use target vocab like histrio, discedere, carcer). Imitate a hungry lion (personam suscipere). Imitate a person trying to get out of jail. Take on the role of a person thrown down by hope.
Increasingly, the kids' scenes are hysterical. The students love watching this, the actors get attention, and you get endless repetitions of whatever you want. I NEVER end this competition by deciding who wins, because you end up with potentially hurt feelings there. But you can ask questions like, "who do you think is the best lion," because that isn't an overall question. Or "who do you think is a dramatic actor/tragic actor/comic actor." Target vocab, target structures, repetition, no hurt feelings. We applaud everybody, the actors are heroes, and I have no idea where seventy minutes have gone, but man there's been a lot of really good input in the last seventy minutes. And that input has real emotional ties, and it's stuff the kids aren't going to forget.
As an aside...I made the terrible mistake of giving them the instruction personam mei suscipere. The children...they know me well. And heck if they didn't pretend, down to verbatim the Latin things I tell them every day, to be me. Turns out repetition works?
A word of warning on some of these: read your room. You want to make sure you set up competition that is entirely friendly and completely useless. If it's going to result in hurt feelings, kids being on the spot, or judginess, this is NOT the way to go. Sam can move an Oreo down his face like nobody's business. That is a good, solid, useless competition.
Monday, December 3, 2018
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.
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.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Alea iacta est - a vocab review game
This is an extremely simple, pretty low-prep vocab review game that happens in pairs or groups. It can take five minutes or an hour, and it keeps pretty well. You'll need:
vocab cards (either TL or L1)
dice
Friday, September 22, 2017
Auto-audio-dictation (a variation on a running dictation)
This year I have a high-flying Latin III student in a very, very behind Latin II class. If I thought I was going to be able to ask them to level up for him, I'd be integrating him, but they can't, and I can't in good conscience ask him to sit through Latin II again. So instead, I'm making use of flipgrid and seesaw (at the suggestion of the great Ginny Lindzey) - more on those later - to essentially give him the lessons I'm teaching in class, but online.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Running in Circles, and a new friend
First, a new friend
I'm pleased to say that I will be sharing my blog with my friend and excellent Latin teacher up in Erie, PA, Eric Mentges. Eric teaches from the Orberg Lingua Latina book. He is also deskless, and, unlike me, has an AP class. I'm excited to be sharing this space, and also to be widening the perspectives we can share. Keep an eye out - I'm hoping our next post will be from Eric. We'll be tagging our posts with our names so you can look for specific people, if you wish.
I'm pleased to say that I will be sharing my blog with my friend and excellent Latin teacher up in Erie, PA, Eric Mentges. Eric teaches from the Orberg Lingua Latina book. He is also deskless, and, unlike me, has an AP class. I'm excited to be sharing this space, and also to be widening the perspectives we can share. Keep an eye out - I'm hoping our next post will be from Eric. We'll be tagging our posts with our names so you can look for specific people, if you wish.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Angeli et Diaboli
I got this years ago from a workshop with Jason Fritze. It's the Peruvian (?! Jason, correct me!) version of tag, I think.
I own several giant white boards, so I use one of them for my demonstration, but you could just as easily use paper. I write on it:
I own several giant white boards, so I use one of them for my demonstration, but you could just as easily use paper. I write on it:
Uses for Small White Boards
Here are a collection of posts I've made on what to do with small white boards if you have them, plus a little extra!
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Duck Duck Goose
We started out with anas anas anser.
By the end of the game, in various classes, we had anus anus ananas, anas anas ananas, and my favorite: ananas ananas pudor.
We played duck duck goose much like you do, with one twist - the student defending their seat had to answer a question. The students chased each other around the circle, and the first student to sit down (or to tag the other student) had to answer a question, Latine, in order to keep the seat. If they got it WRONG, the other student got to answer the question and could steal the seat. If BOTH got it wrong, the original student sat in the middle, and the other student had to duck-duck-goose everyone. It was simple, low-prep, and hilarious. I highly recommend it.
By the end of the game, in various classes, we had anus anus ananas, anas anas ananas, and my favorite: ananas ananas pudor.
We played duck duck goose much like you do, with one twist - the student defending their seat had to answer a question. The students chased each other around the circle, and the first student to sit down (or to tag the other student) had to answer a question, Latine, in order to keep the seat. If they got it WRONG, the other student got to answer the question and could steal the seat. If BOTH got it wrong, the original student sat in the middle, and the other student had to duck-duck-goose everyone. It was simple, low-prep, and hilarious. I highly recommend it.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Reading pictionary
The kids love pictionary, and I like finding excuses to get them to read and reread without making it too obvious that that's what I'm doing. :)
Something I like to do as a result:
I divide the class into three teams and ask for one volunteer from each team. Those three volunteers sit at the front of the room with their backs to the board, and the rest of my students get a mini-whiteboard and marker. But instead of the traditional 'now everyone draw a picture of the word I'm about to write,' those three get a copy of a story they know well instead.
Something I like to do as a result:
I divide the class into three teams and ask for one volunteer from each team. Those three volunteers sit at the front of the room with their backs to the board, and the rest of my students get a mini-whiteboard and marker. But instead of the traditional 'now everyone draw a picture of the word I'm about to write,' those three get a copy of a story they know well instead.
A rereading game
Martina Bex created this gorgeous game called es posibile. I did (almost) nothing but translate it into Latin, beginning with fierine potest? ludus legendi.
The rules are pretty simple: Kid A draws a card, which has a statement on it. The student has to read the statement aloud, and then determine whether it's possible based on the text. If the sentence is possible, the kid moves forward; if not, backward. Rinse and repeat with kid B.
The rules are pretty simple: Kid A draws a card, which has a statement on it. The student has to read the statement aloud, and then determine whether it's possible based on the text. If the sentence is possible, the kid moves forward; if not, backward. Rinse and repeat with kid B.
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
I love doing assessments wherein the assessment is itself a form of input. We've been learning about body parts, among other things, in Latin I. We've labeled kids with duct tape, created facsimilia of people, discussed monsters, et ita porro. We now know - because to an extent, I let the kids drive which body parts they want to know - some unusual body parts, including eyebrows, backs of knees, back of neck and chin.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Oh, no! Poor Joe!
There's a great scene in the movie Dave (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, if you've never seen it, there are your weekend plans; you're welcome) when Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver are visiting a homeless shelter. The kids are playing a game called Oh No Poor Joe. All the kids chant oh, no! Poor Joe! He has no...
and then the facilitator shows them a picture of a body outline missing one part. The kids identify the part all together. This is also a spectacular language learning tool. I can see a lot of purposes for it (including simple identification of body parts), but I've been using it for genitives.
and then the facilitator shows them a picture of a body outline missing one part. The kids identify the part all together. This is also a spectacular language learning tool. I can see a lot of purposes for it (including simple identification of body parts), but I've been using it for genitives.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Mettius Fufetius in rounds
Mettius Fufetius is a re-do of the Spanish game Pancho Comancho. In Pancho Comancho, five or so students are called to the front of the room and given white boards. You can do this with any structure you want, so imagine we're doing it with adjectives. On one is written purple, on one 'tall,' on one 'angry,' on one 'sick' and on one 'sleepy.' The teacher asks a question of one student: Is Pancho Comancho tall? and starts a timer (I usually do one minute for the first round). That student says, "No, Pancho Comancho is not tall; Pancho Comancho is ________ (any of the other adjectives on any other board)." It then becomes a game of verbal hot potato. The student speaking when the timer goes off has to sit down.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
More games your students play
Today I was taught a game by a student. He calls it three snaps. I don't know that I would do this with my first years (at least not yet), but for the uppers, it might be entertaining.
Update: I did this with my uppers today, and it turned out to be a really nice vocab activity. We all played at the same time, and it went really well.
I had them find a partner, and each pair took out one sheet of paper. They drew a square large enough for one word in the upper left corner and another, same size, in the upper right:
They then sit across from each other and snap three times, simultaneously. Then, simultaneously, each says whatever word come to mind first. They record their answers in their boxes and then draw a drop-down box from there.
Update: I did this with my uppers today, and it turned out to be a really nice vocab activity. We all played at the same time, and it went really well.
I had them find a partner, and each pair took out one sheet of paper. They drew a square large enough for one word in the upper left corner and another, same size, in the upper right:
  |
They then sit across from each other and snap three times, simultaneously. Then, simultaneously, each says whatever word come to mind first. They record their answers in their boxes and then draw a drop-down box from there.
  ANIMALOCEAN |
They then snap another three times, and each says a word they think is common ground between the previous two, hoping each says the same word as the other. They continue recording and adding boxes until they say the same word. Sometimes this is accomplish-able in three rounds - sometimes it takes twenty-five.
It was entertaining for them, took them back through old words and new words, and was a exercise in thinking in a slightly more complex way.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Musical Chairs
No one is too old for musical chairs.
My Latin I students have recently acquired what feels to them (and probably is) like a huge amount of vocab, so what's been called for recently is (a) making sure they have it and (b) reviewing some more subtle stuff. I don't even teach numbers, for a couple reasons:
1. They come up all the time, so it sticks much better if we just use them whenever they're necessary.
2. They're just not all that interesting, so much better if we just use them whenever they're necessary. For example, when we learned pen, we also learned that there are a LOT of people in my fifth period who carry around an absurd number of pens. So we counted them all. One kid on a regular basis has 25 pens. Why? Don't know. But now the whole class knows something about her, and we can count to twenty-five.
Anyway, musical chairs.
I have a small collection of music in Latin, which I always play when we play musical chairs. We set up enough chairs in the classroom in a giant circle that everyone can have a chair and - here's the catch - never remove any of them. Each kid gets a little whiteboard, and I have them write the word on them rather than doing it myself. It gives them the exercise in writing in a safe way.
The students sit in a circle with their labeled whiteboards (today: volcano, stand up, chair, black, sit down, ceiling, bring, white, red, etc.). I begin the music. They walk in a circle. No one leaves the circle. However, when I turn off the music, they can sit in any chair they want - even if it's nowhere near them.
Then I go around the circle and ask each of them a question as they show their board. Today the questions were:
1. what does it mean?
2. show me (either literally or with hand signs)
3. how do you pronounce?
4. how do you spell?
5. how many letters are in?
Thus we practiced the vocab, the visual/kinesthetic association with it, asking questions, pronouncing while looking at a word, the alphabet, and numbers.
For upper levels, I also like use in a sentence, give a synonym/antonym, whom does this describe (in a text), etc.
If the kids get something wrong, we don't pull out a chair. That kid goes and sits either outside the circle or in the middle - depends on your class, because you really don't want to shame your kids - with a sheet of paper. On that paper, they keep track of all the words anyone misses, with the definition or answer to the question...until they can answer a question someone missed. I.e. if Thackeray misses quid significat vulcanus and Lucient (who is out) raises his hand and says, "Volcano!", Lucient will give his list to Thackeray, who will sit out/in the middle and continue the list, and Lucient will sit in Thackeray's seat.
My Latin I students have recently acquired what feels to them (and probably is) like a huge amount of vocab, so what's been called for recently is (a) making sure they have it and (b) reviewing some more subtle stuff. I don't even teach numbers, for a couple reasons:
1. They come up all the time, so it sticks much better if we just use them whenever they're necessary.
2. They're just not all that interesting, so much better if we just use them whenever they're necessary. For example, when we learned pen, we also learned that there are a LOT of people in my fifth period who carry around an absurd number of pens. So we counted them all. One kid on a regular basis has 25 pens. Why? Don't know. But now the whole class knows something about her, and we can count to twenty-five.
Anyway, musical chairs.
I have a small collection of music in Latin, which I always play when we play musical chairs. We set up enough chairs in the classroom in a giant circle that everyone can have a chair and - here's the catch - never remove any of them. Each kid gets a little whiteboard, and I have them write the word on them rather than doing it myself. It gives them the exercise in writing in a safe way.
The students sit in a circle with their labeled whiteboards (today: volcano, stand up, chair, black, sit down, ceiling, bring, white, red, etc.). I begin the music. They walk in a circle. No one leaves the circle. However, when I turn off the music, they can sit in any chair they want - even if it's nowhere near them.
Then I go around the circle and ask each of them a question as they show their board. Today the questions were:
1. what does it mean?
2. show me (either literally or with hand signs)
3. how do you pronounce?
4. how do you spell?
5. how many letters are in?
Thus we practiced the vocab, the visual/kinesthetic association with it, asking questions, pronouncing while looking at a word, the alphabet, and numbers.
For upper levels, I also like use in a sentence, give a synonym/antonym, whom does this describe (in a text), etc.
If the kids get something wrong, we don't pull out a chair. That kid goes and sits either outside the circle or in the middle - depends on your class, because you really don't want to shame your kids - with a sheet of paper. On that paper, they keep track of all the words anyone misses, with the definition or answer to the question...until they can answer a question someone missed. I.e. if Thackeray misses quid significat vulcanus and Lucient (who is out) raises his hand and says, "Volcano!", Lucient will give his list to Thackeray, who will sit out/in the middle and continue the list, and Lucient will sit in Thackeray's seat.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Spin the Bottle as a review game
There is no kissing in this game. :)
Instead, its purpose is to review a story your students have read and know well. You'll need a cheap water bottle with about an inch of water in it and groups of 4 to 5.
You'll need around 40 questions about the story. I generally create some easier ones (who is...) and some harder ones, and several in the middle. Not infrequently, I write the questions, but sometimes I also choose to have the students as part of a different activity write their own comprehension questions about the story.
Instead, its purpose is to review a story your students have read and know well. You'll need a cheap water bottle with about an inch of water in it and groups of 4 to 5.
You'll need around 40 questions about the story. I generally create some easier ones (who is...) and some harder ones, and several in the middle. Not infrequently, I write the questions, but sometimes I also choose to have the students as part of a different activity write their own comprehension questions about the story.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Go Fish
Almost every kid I've ever met can play Go Fish (I say almost because it turns out I have one student who's never played, so there goes the assumption that every child knows this game), and they enjoy, if for no other reason than (I'm quoting a student here), "it's fun, it's not really competitive, and there's no pressure or timing and you don't really feel like you're losing." It's also really great for repeating the same vocabulary words and descriptions over and over again, as well as reviewing plot points in a story.
I've been doing MovieTalk with my twos, with a video every kid who's ever seen it hates because it hits them in, as they say, the feels. They never forget it, though. It's a 5:33 short called Changing Batteries. It's really beautifully done and lends itself to all kinds of vocabulary and structures - I highly suggest you watch it.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
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.
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