Fake texts

Just found this website for making fake texts. Endless possibilities! 

Human Dominoes

Thanks to @tomhockaday for reminding me of this at #ililc4.

There are many names for this activity and I've called it a round robin in the past. As students enter the classroom, get them to take a slip of paper with an English sentence on and a different sentence in the target language. Someone else in the room will have a matching English sentence and someone else a matching TL one. 

One student reads out their TL sentence and the student who has the matching English sentence stands up. They then read out their TL one and it continues until the whole class has read out theirs. 

I wanted to get the whole class involved so I did it slightly differently yesterday. Each student had their slips of paper and I asked them to get in a circle around the room. I left them to it and they had to find the two students that would stand either side of them. After they had finished, we read out the phrases to check they were in the right place. 

As an extension, I asked them to write the English of their target language sentence. Ignoring the other typed English sentences, they then played Quiz, Quiz, Trade. 

As a final activity, in groups, they had to write a paragraph using the sentences they had in their hands and not their original. I got them to write on mini white boards and took a photo. Next lesson, we will peer assess as a class and in pairs. 

Human Guess Who

Thanks to a colleague at my school for this idea. It worked really well with my Year 7s. This is based on the board game - Guess Who? Ask for a volunteer to leave the room while the class pick someone for them to guess. It's a good idea to clarify what colour eyes they have etc. before you invite the student back in. When they come back in, everyone stands up and they ask questions in the target language to determine who the person is. C'est une fille? Elle a les cheveux bruns? Elle est grande? As a question is asked, the rest of the class answer with oui or non and students sit down if they don't fit the bill. As we got more confident, we also added personality phrases and wearing glasses. 

Trichez!

Students compete against each other in small groups. Each student starts with 5 counters and try to win as many as possible from the other members of their group. Each student picks up a card from the pile with a phrase on. I got students to make their own to save me some time. The group then has to translate the sentence. If they get it right, they keep their counters but if they get it wrong, they each have to give one of their counters to the student that read it out. Amongst the deck will be some cards with 'trichez!' on. If they pick one of these, they have to make up a phrase without the rest of the group realising what they are doing. If they can bluff their way though until after the group has translated, the rest of the group will have to give them a counter each even if they translated the phrase correctly. 

I did this with the topic of daily routine and time but it could also be used as a revision activity for an assessment. If you have time, you could prepare the sentences but I allowed students to make up 4 of their own with the help of their books. I also got students to think about a reserve phrase in case they picked up a trichez card. 

Thanks to someone on twitter for the original idea. Sorry but I can't remember who! 

Passing notes!

I've been thinking about revision activities for assessments and remembered something I hadn't used for a while - only because I caught a student passing a note! Each student writes a note - it could be a phrase, question or item of vocabulary. They pass their notes while music is playing which adds an element of excitement and buzz in the room! When the music stops, they open the note and have to answer the question or translate the word or phrase. You could check students' understanding by using a random name generator. This could also be done using paper aeroplanes or snowball fight depending on your class.