#FridayBeforeSpringBreak: Game Day!

Or, alternatively, how to ace your observation with minimal prep on the day before a break 🙂

With the high absenteeism typical for the day before a break, today was the perfect day to pull out my collection of games! I divided students into groups of four or five and after a brief intro, gave each group one of the following games to play. I walked around, answered questions, and played along! It was the perfect #fridaybeforespringbreak. 🙂

The games:

1. As, Dos, Tres.  – a counting game I learned in Costa Rica, kind of like War or ERS.
2. Pensante – a few years ago a friend gave me a copy of Pensante, which is basically Spanish scrabble. I handed the game to one group along with a stack of dictionaries. I let them make up their own rules from there (trading letters, taking as many as they wanted, hunting for words in the dictionary…) as long as they played words in Spanish.
3. Lotería – I found a couple of sets of Lotería in the department’s supply closet last May. What??? Why aren´t these being used? Well, I opened one up and realized it was probably because some of the pictures aren’t quite school appropriate – El borracho? El negrito? And really, La sirenita, would it be too much to put some sea shells on? So I cut up a few cards and taped them back together until I had 10 school appropriate lotería cards, and Voila! a station 🙂
4. Verba – I have one “real” set and one print & play set I printed, laminated, and laboriously cut apart during post planning last summer at our local Teacher’s Resource Center. My students really enjoyed it! I just told them it was like Spanish Apples to Apples or Cards against humanity, and they took it from there. I used it in two big groups yesterday in Spanish 1 after my students finished a test, but I think it was even better in the small groups (4-5) that we did today.

   

   Big groups for Verba in Spanish 1

5. Spot it – I started class today previewing spot it vocab with this set on Quizlet. I printed out some flash cards and had students cut them into a matching game, we ran through a few rounds of Scatter, and played some Quizlet live. Then I called a representative from each group and demo’d with them how to play. So fun! I gave the game to one group, along with a print out of the vocab from Quizlet. They were really into it!

These pictures do not adequately convey the intensity of this game!

Advertisement