Do you need new classroom games for student engagement? This week on Growing with Proficiency – The Podcast, I recorded an amazing episode with Dahiana Castro, an amazing Spanish and French teacher!
Dahiana shared three super fun games that will bring back the energy and excitement to your classroom. These games are like hidden treasures that you’ll want to keep until the perfect moment. These awesome activities will have your students dying to play!
What I love most about these games is how easily they can be adapted to any content, language, or level you teach. If you’re looking to spice up your lessons and inject energy into your classroom, episode 35 is a must-listen!
In this post, I’ll highlight a few games that we talked about but to hear Dahiana Castro spill the beans on these hidden gems, listen to episode 35 on your favorite podcast player, above, or go here for the episode.
As always, you can find all episodes of Growing with Proficiency – The Podcast here.
Multiple Choice Activity
When you do a simple multiple choice activity where you tell students to answer with A, B, C, or D, add in a movement. So, you could partner the multiple choice option A with a movement such as hands up. If it’s a B, then do a dance move, and if it’s C, one hand on your head. This changes the activity that you’ve been doing since the beginning of the year.
Photo Scavenger Hunt
Dahiana Castro also shared with me this take on a scavenger hunt that she did with her level two students. She explained it like this: I gave my students a list of 26 tasks to do around school, and I gave them 20 minutes. In Spanish, they had to go around the school and find different things.
For example: take a selfie with a window because they learned the word window this year in Spanish, take a picture of an orange object in our school, or take a picture of somebody walking around the hallway.
I also gave them a prize for the first person that completed all the tasks, and then the second place was for most creative. To extend this, they had to upload the pictures into Canva later as an assignment, and they had to write descriptions in Spanish. It was super engaging, and they were happy!
Trashket Ball
This is a good one for this time of year, especially when energy is super low. You need a trash can that’s going to serve as a basketball hoop. Next, you need a ball and questions. For the questions, you can write the questions beforehand, or you can have your students write the questions for you. Here is an example: students get to reread chapter six and write five questions about that chapter.
Then, you ask a question to a team. If they get the question correctly, they get one point. They also get a chance to throw the ball into the trash can. If they make it, they get an extra point for their team. If they make it from the two-point line, you just put tape on the floor for a two-point line, they get two extra points. At the three-point line, they get three extra points for their team.
There are many variations to this game, and some people have a lot of rules for this game. But, it’s super simple, and the students love it!
Listen to
episode 35 to hear more about these activities and more! Don’t forget to check out the links and resources mentioned in this episode!
