Category Archives: Activities and Games

Spelling Activity for the Foreign Language Classroom

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prod6304_dtI am always looking for new ways to use the plastic magnetic letters that I have. This activity is called “fishing for letters”.  Students use a string with a paper clip or other small metal object and a bowl of plastic magnetic letters.  They fish out 3-4 letters in small groups and write words in the target language beginning with those letters. The first group to write a word for each letter wins the round. It is also helpful to give categories if you want students to review a particular vocabulary theme. You can also have them try to build the longest word that they can using in the letters that they fished out and adding in any additional letters that they need to spell out the word.  A second round can involve groups writing sentences with their words.  This idea could work well with Scrabble tiles as well.  I usually take out the letters that less commonly appear at the beginning of a word.

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Posted in Activities and Games, Writing

World Language Reading Strategy: Highlighting

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Text highlighting is a great way to assess what students understand in a reading without translating or responding to questions.  Decide on colors and review the colors and parts of speech with examples.  You way want to have students only focus on one particular part of speech (subjects = who?) or various responses.  This is also a helpful activity for students to practice recognizing parts of speech in a sentence.  You could also set it up so that students highlight various verb tenses to demonstrate their ability to recognize the tenses and contextualize them when reading.  It is likely that not all students will have all of the colors of highlighters.  In this case I have them complete the activity by rotating to stations around the room.

Foriegn (World) Language Reading Strategy: Highlighting (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.com

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Posted in Activities and Games, Reading

Interactive Foreign Language Activities with …Cothespins?

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Clothespin activities are an engaging way to practice listening and speaking skills in the target language. Everyone has a card and a clothespin. They hear a question or prompt and clip the clothespin on the card to mark the answer. Clipping on the clothespin engages students  and the teacher can quickly check the answers visually.

Interactive Foreign (World) Language Activities with ...Cothespins? (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comClothespin activities can provide excellent listening and speaking opportunities. Students can ask the questions and take turns giving instructions to the group or they can work in pairs.   You can make this more interactive with cards that students flip over with a picture and words to pin or subjects and infinitives with conjugated verb forms to pin.  This is a a good version for small groups or pairs and it can be a little competition.

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Posted in Activities and Games, Listening, Speaking

Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy

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Once students have seen (in writing) or heard verb forms in context the next step is to begin producing language.  This activity is an effective follow-up and extension to comprehensible input activities that helps students to see that they can recognize forms and patterns that they have seen in context.

Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)

If you are moving away from direct instruction of verb conjugations, try this out with students. If they have had sufficient contextualized exposure to the verb forms and meanings you will  see that students can choose the accurate form based on what “sounds right.”

When this happens we know that they are progressing in their proficiency and moving toward accurate language output. This activity also supports students as they level up to the Intermediate Low Proficiency Level where they are creating sentences on their own.

These French and Spanish activities are done in Powerpoint and the animation is all set up.  All you have to do is click.

Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)

There are two possible ways to use these Powerpoints:

  • Students write sentences based on the subject and infinitive on each slide when an infinitive and a subject pronoun are revealed. Students see 4 possible verb forms. An additional click reveals the correct form for students to verify their form along with question words so that students can write a complete sentence with the verb form.

Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)

  • Another option is for two students to go to the screen (where powerpoint is projected) and each one has a fly swatter. The activity begins just as the first possibility, but in this version the first student to slap the correct verb form says a complete sentence with the accurate verb form once the form is revealed and the question word appears.

Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)Activity that Focuses on Verb Meaning and Accuracy (French, Spanish)

 

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Speaking

Foreign Language Sentence Writing Activity (Tactile, Concrete, Visual)

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Foreign(World) Language Sentence Writing Activity (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.com

This activity helps students build sentences in the target language in a very visual, concrete and tactile way. Students cut out the individual words, assemble sentences and then write them. This is a great way to help with individual student problem areas (verb forms, word order, negation) in a very concrete way since the papers can be swapped out along with a concrete explanation.

These documents can be created in WORD or you can download several Spanish and French verb form versions below:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Writing

Foreign Language Verb Form Practice With Sentences

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This activity gets students writing sentences with correct verb forms that demonstrates that they know the meaning of the verb and its various forms. Begin each slide with a single click that reveals the verb (infinitive) and 3 subject pronouns with question words. Students have 40 seconds (the line on the bottom of the slide disappears to show time passing) to write three sentences that include the subject, the correct form of the verb and the additional information based on the question word(s).  The next screen shows the three verb forms that students should have written so that they can check their work. The teacher then has students share their examples with a partner or with the class. This activity works well individually or in pairs. Students can write the sentences on small white boards or on a sheet of paper.

This activity can be done using Powerpoint animation.  Below are some complete activities to practice various French and Spanish verb forms.

French:

Spanish:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Technology, Writing

Using Powerpoint to Practice Foreign Language Writing

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This is a great activity that use powerpoint to get students writing  and practicing verb forms.  The teacher begins each slide with a single click reveals three number combinations.
Practice Foeign (World) Language Vern Forms and Tenses with Powerpoint (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comThe first number is the subject and the second number is the verb. Students then have 30 seconds (the triangle disappears to show time passing) to write the three subjects with the correct form of the verb. An additional click shows the three subjects with the correct verb forms so that students can check their verb forms.  Here is an example of a French writing activity.
French Activities:
Spanish Activities:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Grammar and Structures, Writing

Interactive Crossword Puzzle to Practice Foreign Language Vocabulary

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Interactive Foreign (World) Language Crossword Puzzles (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comWith this Interactive Crossword Puzzle students have the opportunity to practice speaking, listening and writing in the target language.

  • Partner #1 has the A picture sheet and the B crossword puzzle.
  • Partner #2 has the B picture sheet and the A crossword puzzle.

The two partners alternate reading a clue out loud from the crossword clues on his/her crossword puzzle sheet. The other students has the answers on the picture sheet and provides the answer orally at which point the student reading the clue fills in the answer.

These can be created using websites to create word puzzles or you can download the activities below.

French Interactive Crossword Puzzles:

Spanish Interactive Crossword Puzzles:

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Posted in Activities and Games, Listening, Speaking, Writing

Communicative Foreign Language Activity (Speak, Listen, Write)

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Give your students an opportunity to practice and gain confidence in speaking, listening and writing in the target language. This activity  can focus on any verb tense as well various other grammar points.

Communicative Foreign (World) Language Activity (Speak, Listen, Write) (French, Spanish) wlteacher.wordpress.comStudents circulate in the classroom and ask each other questions using the subject pronoun and verb (in the correct form) found on their paper. The objective is to find the other person who has the same 6 sentences. My activities typically include 6 matches. If there are more than 12 students in the class, I simply photocopy additional slips and students need to find their group of 3 or 4 that all match.

When a match (or group) is found, the students work together to write the six sentences in the target language. The entire activity can easily take place in the target language.  The example below is for reflexive verbs in French.  These two papers match, but only these two. The other four have one verb that is different.

Here is a template to create your own

Complete French Activities:

Complete Spanish Activities

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Posted in Activities and Games, Listening, Speaking

Foreign Language Reading Activity for Beginners

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This activity gives beginner students an opportunity to see how much they  understand in the target language. To begin, the teacher posts 6 paragraphs written in the target language around the classroom. It is important to focus on vocabulary and structures that the class has covered. Students are given a set of questions whose answers can be found in each of the paragraphs. Students move around individually or in pairs to each paragraph and record the answers. This is a great beginning reading activity that can then be used to get students speaking in class once they have all of the information and the teacher verifies the information with the class orally.  Once students are familiar with this type of activity it can be used with more advanced vocabulary and structures in subsequent years.  It is a great way to focus on cultural elements as well.

These activities can be created using WORD documents.

You can download full versions here:    FRENCH     SPANISH

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Posted in Activities and Games, Classroom Procedures, Reading