games for free time in class

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 06:41:31 -0800From: "Marcy St.John" mestjohn@YAHOO.COM
Subject: What to do when you finish early
Word train:
The teacher writes any target language word on the board, and then the game goes around the room as students must say a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word. On the board the teacher writes the words and hooks them together w/ hyphens, making a very long 'word train'. [Add a caboose word, something new, that could become a bonus question onthe next quiz.]
Letter list:
Students pair w/ a neighbor [or you can create more random groupings, if there's time], and one student is designated the 'scribe'. The teacher chooses a letter of the alphabet [I pulled one at random from my alphabet flashcards; in any case, avoid Q, X, K, etc.!]. The students have 2 minutes [or whatever period of time the teacher states] to list words they know in the target language that begin with that letter. No books, dictionaries, etc. No proper nouns. At the end of the 2 minutes, the scribe puts down her/his pen and picks up a pencil, or any different writing utensil. [This keeps the groups from adding words beyond the 2 minutes.] Going around the room, a'speaker' from each group calls out a word from the group's list. The scribes from the other groups must cross it off their list, if they have it. The calling continues until one group remains with a word not yet called and crossed out. [If time runs out, the students in the remaining groups put their names on their lists and circle their unused words. The teacher collects these lists and announces the winning group the next day.] Bonus points to the winners and to the runners-up.
Categories: The teacher calls out a category in the target language ['comestibles'/things to eat] and the students say words from that category. [The teacher can jot them on the board or not.] The results can be hilarious, arguable, whatever! This game can also be played like the list game above.
Psychology:
[Takes a bit more time]. Students are paired and sit facing each other. Each has paper and pencil. The teacher names a category: 'couleur'/color. The students try to psych each other out and write down, with their hand covering their writing, the same answer as their partner. After 15 seconds, the teacher calls out 'Vérifiez'/Check, and each pair that gave identical answers gets a point. [The student pairs keep their own scores--I never gave bonus points for this game. We did it just for fun.] Other categories: name a French-speaking country, flower, Canadian province, day of the week, vehicle, etc.]

chercher un metier

Another activity is a survey based on the "Materiales" from the Education Office of the Spanish Embassy. Students take a survey on which factors matter most to them in a job/carrer, rating them on a 1-5 scale. They get together in groups to discuss similarities and differences, then turn them in. A couple of days later after the results are tabulated, further conversations develop along the lines of: Are you typical or different? What differences do you notice between responses of guys and girls? What surprises are there for you? Why did students mark things the way they did? And so on.

My favorite activity involves examining want-ads from different target language countries. I select a sample from newspapers from about five or six different countries. I label the ads with letters. Students examine each ad on a grid for the various elements that one might expect to find in a job ad. I also include aspects which would not be legal to include in ads in the US but are commonly found in other countries which have different notions of what is or is not fair in hiring. For examples, ads can easily be found in newspapers in Spanish speaking countries which ask for a photo, specify an age range, direct themselves to women or men only, request a preferred marital status, etc. This helps reinforce vocabulary for application, resume, interview, salary, benefits, etc. It also give a "teachable moment" for hiring standards in our country (kids don't know that certain questions are illegal to ask in job interviews or to put on job applications). We also examine the American cultural perspective of fairness and discrimination compared to other countries in which the employer's right to hire whomever he wishes is more paramount. If you don't have a collection of newspapers hanging around, online want-ads might be usable as well.This is also a good unit to introduce business letter formats in the target country. There are lots of online job finding sites with examples of business letters, resumes, and job hunting tips that can be the basis of reading comprehension and writing activities.
I do this unit toward the end of level III. I find that this is a great unit to help students recognize that they are making the transition from learning the language to using the language as a tool for learning new things.
Bill Heller
Perry HS
Perry, NY 14530