Teachers' TV
Title
Spanish games and activities
Author
Mirella Jerez-Rios
Associated Teachers’ TV programmes
Teaching with Bayley: Points Mean Prizes
Programme description
Bayley spends a frantic day with an award-winning teacher
Note to teachers
This document was not created by Teachers' TV but the author has allowed us to publish it here to be used for educational purposes
Spanish games and activities
Background
As a continuing feature of her lessons Mirella divides each class into two opposing teams and awards points for correct answers. This element of continual competition gives the students anincentive to take part in the lesson. Each half term the points are added up and the winning team is given a prize. In Mirella's class,points mean prizes!
Key issues
You must always ask yourself what the purpose of each activity is beyond winning the game.The games are also a way of using limited resources to maximum effect.
Activities
One page of traditionaltextbook and one PowerPoint slide provided the raw materials for all these activities.
*The envelope with sentences in English and Spanish translations on the board
There are ten sentences in Spanish arranged in a pattern on the whiteboard (in this instance the sentences are all reasons why people enjoy their jobs).Each student is given an envelope with the English translations and they must put their sentences into the same pattern as those on the board.
*The class chooses three reasons in Spanish why the teacher enjoys being a teacher, and the teacher has seven lives to guess the reasons.
If the class wins it gets no homework; if the teacher wins, the class gets homework (however Mirella plays this game on days that she knows she isn't timetabled to give out homework!)
Mirella leaves the classroom whilst the classdecides, so she doesn't hear which it chooses.It's a way of givingpower to the students, giving them ownership over the lesson.
*Throwing the ball and asking questions
This makes questions and answers far more interesting and fun... and it keeps the students on their toes.They haveno idea who Mirella is going to throw the ball to... and there's the urgency of catching the ball, answering the question and throwing the ball back in the shortest possible time.
*Pass the envelope
The envelope contains sentences written in English and is passed around (like pass the parcel) to music. When the music stops, the pupil with the envelope has five seconds to say the sentence he/she picks out in Spanish. They get three points if they get the sentence right. This is a fun way to revise vocabulary and grammatical structures.
*The writing game
Mirella has eight English sentences written down, the class is divided into teams and each group has a mini-white board. This game is about learning through self-correction and teamwork. There are eight members of each team and Mirellahas eight sentences in English. Taking it in turn, a member of each team goesto the front of the class, Mirella shows them a sentence in English, theyrace back to their team, tell them the English sentence and, as a team, they then translate the sentence into Spanish. They write it on their mini whiteboard and show it to Mirella. She'll say yes or no. If it's yes, the next person in the team comes out to get a sentence.If it's no, theyhave to work out what's wrong and show her again - and sometimes again and again - until they self correct their mistakes. The first group to complete all eight sentences wins five points. Again the game is a way of reinforcing and revising certain grammatical structures and vocabulary, without the students realising they are revising!
* The Star Game
There are 16 cards stuck onto the board; 11 of the cards contain questions, three cards contain stars and two cards contain 0's. If a student picks a card with a star, they automatically get three points.If they pick a card with a question and answer the question correctly, they get two points. And if they get a card with a '0' then all their team's points are wiped out (or if Mirella's feeling kind, they only lose 10...!)
Again Mirella uses this game to orally reinforce grammar and vocabulary. The questions she asks the students are related closely to the sentences and structures they've practiced in theprevious games, so it's a fun way of checking how much they've learnt.She can also target the question to the ability of the student who is answering.
Over time, she has found that she has to vary which cards have the stars and zeros, because students tend to memorise their position.