Activities, Games, and Assessment Strategies for the World Language Classroom

Amy Buttner Zimmer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138827271
• eBook ISBN: 9781317574422
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This bestselling book is filled with fun activities you can use to engage students in learning a world language. No matter what language and grade level you teach, you will love having a wide variety of tools at your disposal, from quick warm-up exercises to longer games and group activities.

Inside, you'll find…

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• Essential teacher tools and student organizational tools

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• Strategies to promote and monitor class participation, including student self-assessments

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• Strategies to promote and assess oral proficiency, such as prompts, quick chats, and role plays

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• Warm-up activities and five-minute transitional activities

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• Individual, pair, and group practice activities, with modification suggestions

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• Games that make learning fun, with clear directions for how to do them

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• Great websites and other resources to check out for more ideas

The enhanced second edition features updated activities and technology suggestions throughout, as well as a tabbed design so it's easier to return to your favorite sections again and again.

Bonus: The book comes with more than 30 templates—charts, rubrics, and game boards that can be photocopied from the book or downloaded as eResources from the book product page at www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138827295. You can modify and print them for classroom use.

1
Classroom Organization

Essential Teacher Tools and Ways to Use Them

Flashcards

Flashcards are a useful part of a teacher’s toolbox for each unit. You can use them to review culture, content, vocabulary, and key questions. Consider using a mix of more traditional flashcards with pictures and text created on paper, as well as making use of online flashcard sources. Paper flashcards are still useful, especially for station-based activities or activities that involve moving around the room. So don’t throw them out just because we are in the digital age! Students still need a mix of resources to interact with.

Flashcard Sources

• Clip art
• Student drawings
• Calendar pictures
• Magazine pictures or store fliers

Digital Flashcard Sources

There are many sources for online flashcards. The two listed are tried and true sites that integrate tools or games beyond a standard flashcard. You can search for many existing flashcards made by others and copy sets to adapt them in Quizlet. With Memrise you can search for existing courses made by other users.

• www.quizlet.com: This free site includes flashcards, games, and fill-in-the-blank practice options. Audio is also integrated. Teachers can monitor student progress, record their own audio, and add pictures to the cards for a minimal yearly fee.
• www.memrise.com: Memrise allows you to create a course with different modules, which are your study topics. Users can also create Mems to help them visualize and make textual connections, hear audio, and view a leaderboard, which adds a nice element of competition for students. Memrise has many existing courses to choose from in a variety of languages. If you use Quizlet as well, or find flashcards there you like, you can easily export your list from Quizlet and copy it to Memrise. Instead of doing the standard word-by-word entry in Memrise, you can click on Advanced. When you do so, you can copy and paste the text that is ready to export from Quizlet. You can add audio right away, not at all, or wait until you have a bit more time.

Make Flashcards That Ask Students to …

• Identify vocabulary words from English to target language
• Identify vocabulary terms in the target language from a description or context given in the target language
• Translate sentences
• Answer questions
• Provide the question for the answer provided
• Give beginnings or ends of sentences
• Review content-based vocabulary
• Review cultural information

Ways to Use Flashcards

Application 1: Practice Key Questions

Materials: Flashcards, whiteboard, blank sheet of paper, or tablet

Show flashcards with questions and ask students to respond with an answer or show answers and ask students to provide the question. This can be done orally, with paper flashcards or with digital flashcards projected on a screen or interactive whiteboard. You can also ask students to write down the question or answer. Another option is to set up your question flashcards at stations around the room and ask students to go to each one and write down an answer to the question that is there. Make a game out of the review by using your flashcard questions with the Casino game that is described in the Games section. If you have more access to technology, students can write answers on an app like Educreations or a whiteboard app. This is nice for students who do not have clear handwriting, as they can use the typing feature. If you have an iPad or iPhone, you can use AirPlay and run the flashcards from your mobile device. This gives you the mobility to move around the room and still project the flashcards onto the screen or interactive whiteboard. Alternatively, you can have a student control the flipping of the cards while you move about the room.

Application 2: Write Sentences or Stories

Materials: Flashcards, blank sheet of paper

Give groups of students a selection of various word or picture flashcards. Ask them to find a creative way to use all of them in a sentence, write questions, make true or false statements, or write a story using the vocabulary on the cards. Have the students illustrate their sentences, questions, or story. Also try having the students write the longest logical or illogical sentence that they can that uses all the flashcards. Differentiate by allowing more advanced students to take on the story-writing task while allowing other students to write statements or questions.

Application 3: Word Brainstorm With Alphabet Letters

Materials: Alphabet flashcards, blank sheet of paper

Use alphabet flashcards to get individuals or groups to brainstorm a list of all of the words that they know that begin with that letter. Put alphabet letters in Quizlet or a similar site and have an individual, pair, or class competition. Or have them do this by going through a few stations that have different letters or give them three to four random letters. As an additional challenge, see how long of a sentence they can form where all of the words start with the same letter.

Modification: Have students try not to guess the word you put in on the definition side of the flashcard. Give 1–2 points for each unique word they come up with as compared to yours, and take away 1 point if they pick your word. See an example here: http://quizlet.com/_p7hhc.

Application 4: Combine Unrelated Ideas

Materials: Flashcards, blank sheet of paper

Give students in pairs or groups a few unrelated or seemingly unrelated flashcards and ask them to write sentences, questions, or a story that establishes a relationship among them. Ask students to provide an illustration as well. You could select a couple words from a set of flashcards (digital or otherwise) by shuffling the set to make it random if the list is not thematic. Or you can give them the set digitally on their own to access on a device and have them pick however many you want used to form a story.

Application 5: Play Games

Materials: Flashcards

Use digital or paper flashcards to play Around the World, Five, Charades, Casino, and Pictionary, and for Inside-Outside Circle activities. For descriptions of these activities, see the table of contents for their locations.

Application 6: Discuss

Materials: Flashcards

Use your flashcards for group discussion questions. If they are teacher-led discussions for whole group or guided pair discussion questions, they can be created in a digital stack of cards. If you want questions that students can hold on to and that will be used multiple times, use cardstock that you can cut down for printing multiple sets of question cards more efficiently. You can also use the questions for Inside-Outside Circle speaking activities so students have cards with the information that they should discuss.

The Prop Box

To add excitement to class skits, dialogues, charades, sing-alongs, and other impromptu situations, a prop box is a world language classroom necessity. Fill a see-through storage box with random items, including telephones, costumes, masks, crazy hats, old clothes, sunglasses, plastic instruments, and so forth.

Prop Box Sources

Rummage sales, thrift stores, and your own closet are good places to find prop box treasures. Shop after the holidays to get good sales on Halloween masks and costumes, Santa hats, and more. The Oriental Trading Company also has fun finds for low prices. See if the drama department has any props or costumes they are willing to donate. Also, check with fellow staff members or students to see if they have something they or their parents might want to get rid of. The wackier the items you find, the better!

Ways to Use Props

Use your props to stimulate oral and writing activities. Pull out some seemingly unrelated items and ask the students to perform a skit or write a story that integrates all of them. Stage a mystery by asking the students to explain why the items were found at the scene of a crime. Ask students to wear some of the items and do a short, silent skit. Ask the performers and the audience to retell the events orally or in a written form, doing their best to narrate what happened. The prop box can provide multiple options for oral and writing activities.

Whiteboards

Student whiteboards are a great addition to any world language classroom. Using whiteboards students can draw vocabulary pictures and then label them in the target language, practice spelling, ask and answer questions, translate sentences, conjugate verbs, draw scenes, and play pair and group games. Have students hold up their answers and wait for you to check them, or post/project answers for self-checking. The students like the immediate feedback you can give them, and it is a great way for you to quickly check student progress. If you have access to tablets with a whiteboard app, or whiteboard software on computers, that adds a nice way to vary how to practice as well. Offer choice to students by allowing them to use a dry-erase board, a tablet or laptop, or pencil and paper. Some apps on iPads are Educreations, Doodle Buddy, or KidsDoodle. If you use an interactive white-board, students should be able to have that software installed on laptops as well.

It is nice to have a student write his or her answers on the board, standard or interactive, while students are writing their answers down as well. If students have iPads they can use AirPlay to show the work directly from their iPad as well. You can then be free to check answers of other students or move about the room. You can create your questions based on student responses or have pre-made questions in flashcards, a Google Presentation, on a PowerPoint, or in any software application you have available.

Although they can be purchased ready-made from supply companies, a very economical way to get them is from a home improvements store that sells shower board. Depending on the size you are looking for, two sheets will yield about 40 individual boards. Consider getting a variety of sizes, some smaller for individual practice and others larger for group use.

Ways to Use Whiteboards

Note: In this section, when the term whiteboard is used, it should be understood that it can be dry-erase or an electronic version.

Materials: Vocabulary list or questions, whiteboards, dry-erase markers and rags or erasers, or tablets/laptops

Application 1: For Vocabulary Practice

When students are first learning vocabulary you can say the word to them in the target language and have them illustrate it and write it down in the target language. Alternatively, you may wait until students have practiced the vocabulary and are more familiar and use this as a formative assessment. Ask students to hold up their board when they have finished their answers so you can check their work. By illustrating the word, students show you that they know what the word means. When having them write the word, you can help them sound it out and work with spelling patterns if necessary. Encourage them to have their vocabulary list out on their desk in case they can’t remember the word at all or are confused by its sp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Meet the Author
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• eResources
• Introduction
• 1 Classroom Organization
• 2 Strategies to Promote and Assess Oral Proficiency
• 3 Warm-Up Activities
• 4 Individual Practice Activities
• 5 Pair Activities
• 6 Group Activities
• 7 Games
• 8 Five-Minute Activities to Stretch Your Legs and Brain
• Resources and Bibliography