On Wednesday I described how I modified an activity that was brought to my attention by the very talented Sharon Birch. It worked very well indeed. My class not only stayed in the target language, but actually engaged in meaningful conversation for most of the bell.
I want to share how I tweaked a couple of things to make it work for my classes.
-I have a couple of large classes, so I had groups of 3-4 students set up to go as soon as class started.
-I had little baggies with 24 popsicle sticks at each group. The kid who drew the card would share information based on the prompt with his group mates, and then each of his group mates could ask him a follow up question to earn a popsicle stick. The question had to relate to the initial student sentence and could NOT be a yes/no question.
-At the end of the game the students would add up their cards & the popsicle sticks (1pt/ea), and the student with the most points would earn a treat.
-If a student spoke English he would have to surrender one of his popsicle sticks. If he didn’t have any, then the student who called him on his English could draw a card from the stash that he had earned.
Although going through the directions took some time, it was worth it, and I know I won’t have to do so the next time we play. Let me know how you modify this activity to work for you!
