Are you looking for practical and high engaging activities? If you’re saying, yes, this blog post is for you. There is nothing like a low prep activity that get students moving, interacting and engaging with your content, and that’s why you’re going to love these 5 practical and engaging activities.
I discovered these activities at SCOLT 24. This was a great conference full of amazing sessions, incredible presenters, and outstanding conversations.
In episode 83 of Growing with Proficiency The Podcast, I share with you some of my biggest takeaways. In this post, I’ll highlight some of those takeaways from the conference, but to hear all of the details, listen to episode 83 here.
Daily Routine Gallery Walk
The first conference session I want to talk about was Angela Johnson and Robin Oliver’s presentation about turning your textbook into a guide on the side. The first activity that I love to do was daily routine gallery walk. You can do this for any content that you have in your class.
For this activity, Angela, who is also a member of Growing With Proficiency The Spanish Teacher Academy, created a slide with five images, and two or three sentences below each image, talking about her daily routine. She made it very comprehensible and very relatable because she was using places that they have in Atlanta, where she lives. So, it was something that is also relatable to students.
Next, she did some activities with her routine such as comprehension questions and some personalized questions. Then, she asked her students to do the same as her model. Finally, she printed out all of the slides, posted them on the walls, and numbered them to create her gallery walk.
Angela also created a document with all of this information with questions like, “Who eats cereal for breakfast in the morning?” and “Who wakes up the earliest in the morning?” What I really like about this is that you would be creating 20+ narrow readings. A narrow reading is a small reading, a small text, where you repeat the same structures but with different information. I share more follow-up questions you can do with this in episode 83. I thought that this world language activity was such a clever way to create more input for our students and to give them a task to complete while they were reading their classmates activities.
Games of Consequences
Robin shared so many good games with us at this conference session, but I really liked the Games of Consequences. I had not previously heard of it! It’s such a fun game. It’s sort of like Mad Libs. To start, students take a piece of paper and fold it into eight sections.
Next, they are put into groups of four. Students are then prompted with, “there is a person named…”, they write a name and then they fold their paper. Then they’re asked, “this person met a person named…, they met at…, person A did…, then this happened…”, etc. At the end, there will be a consequence. You can hear my whole explanation in more detail in episode 83.
Students are providing a little bit of language to complete each sentence, but, at the end, there is going to come a little story. Then they can be read, and maybe you could select one to illustrate. The stories could also be used to select which one is the funniest, which one makes sense, or maybe using the four stories, each group can create one story. Students are being creative without any stress on their part because the language that they have to provide is minimal.
Two Games for Engagement
Another conference session I want to talk about was the one that my friend, Bethany Drew, did, reclaiming our time templates and techniques to work smarter, not harder. One of the games that I want to share is Seis.
Seis or Six
To start, students are in groups of two or three with their own paper, and you have one pencil and one dice between them. Basically, you give them a task. What I used in the past were translations.
Next, you give them a paper with six to ten sentences in the target language. A student starts writing ,and another person rolls the dice until they get a six. When they get a six, the person writing stops and the other person who rolled a six starts. It just keeps going like this.
Bethany does this with comprehension questions. We all have comprehension questions to use after we read or listen. So, this is a way to spice up those comprehension questions.
Cup Stacks
Cup Stacks also has to do with comprehension questions. You are going to divide your class into groups. Each group is going to have a whiteboard, a marker, and an eraser. Then, the teacher asks a question twice and counts and says, “1,2,3,4,5 show me”. The students show their board, and the students who get the correct answer, gets a plastic cup. After all of the questions are asked, the students have two minutes to build the tallest tower they can with the cups they have earned. By repeating the question twice, it’s not about speed. It’s about processing the language, understanding the question, and being able to answer.
Tip to Remember
Every time that I went to a conference session at SCOLT, at some point, the presenters reminded us that the activity is something that you need to do several times, until your students learn how to play the game and learn how to do the activity. You have to keep doing it the same way, so don’t change it.
Developing 21st Century Skills
The next conference session I want to share about was by Chelsea Lawrence. In this session, Chelsea was talking about the importance of developing 21st century skills through current events.
Why is this important? Because many of our students don’t even know where they are, such as geographically, in terms of what is happening in the world, in terms of awareness that there is more out there than their own reality. So, by using current events, we give that awareness by exploring different places. For example, by starting with a map, we can point out different countries and different places. That is such an eye opener for our students, and it’s so important!
Chelsea also made a comment that I really liked. She said, “I’m not limited to Spanish speaking countries, she teaches Spanish. I can talk about any current event in Spanish.” It’s important for us to remember that our classes can expand beyond the country that speaks the language that we’re teaching.
Discussion Diamond
The first activity that Chelsea shared was Discussion Diamond.
- Have small groups, about four students per group.
- Groups will have a graphic organizer with a diamond in the center, and it should have four corners, with each student having a corner.
- Next, ask a question, or give students a prompt based on a text that they’re reading, something that they’re listening to, something that you’re studying, or a novel that you’re reading. Then, each student is going to answer and reflect on that question on each one of their corners. Students, then, agree on one specific answer among the group.
Chelsea also talked about infographics. I detail an infographic activity also in episode 83.
Silent Conversation
The final activity I want to share is silent conversation. On a side note, in episode 83, I also share an activity similar to the one I’m about to share from Chelsea’s presentation. That is called, Respond, React, and Review. Listen to the episode to hear about this additional activity.
For Silent Conversation, you start with a big piece of paper. On this big piece of paper, there is a text. It can be an image, an infographic, or an authentic resource, like a menu. The text can be whatever text you want it to be.
You’ll have groups of students of three or four, but no more than four. Each student will have a different colored marker. That way you can see how much they are participating.
Then, you give students some time to read in silence and react. You can have them answer questions or have a prompt that they need to answer.
After a given time, you can have students rotate to a different paper and continue the discussion. You can also do a jigsaw, where the first group is the expert group and then you split those expert groups. So, the new groups are formed with one expert from the different types of texts, one student who has a deeper understanding of that specific test. Then, you do the silent conversation, going from text to text.
Finally, I want to share with you a guide for language teachers that are interested in understanding more about what is comprehensible and communicative teaching, or language teaching. It is a free PDF where you can read and go back to the foundation. The guide is available in English and Spanish. You’ll find this is so helpful! Download it here.
Resources & Links
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Connect with me in IG: Claudia @IG
Discussion Diamond
Silent Discussion
Also, if you haven’t already, download your teacher guide “How To Shift to A Comprehensible and Communicative Teaching Approach”. This guide is available in English and Spanish. Click here now!
