¡Pégalo Primero! Game

I am always trying to think of ways to expose my students to a variety of ways to practice vocabulary. Let's face it, if we are teaching languages as we should be, it should be comprised of vocabulary (words and phrases). Students love games and therefore, the two should naturally go together. So I came up with a game (forgive me if someone out there already has something similar) that is highly engaging and also practices input of the language/vocabulary. This game is not limited to language classes alone. It is such a fun way to practice vocabulary words, phrases, events...just about anything!

I call it "¡Pégalo Primero!" (which means Hit It First!) as, the object of the game is to "hit" or grab the card first. As you are describing the scene, vocabulary word, event, etc., the students must keep their fingers on the edge of the table until you finish your description then they must grab the card first. It can get very loud and quite exciting! One rule I use in my class is focused primarily to save my cards: they cannot fight over a card. If there is a dispute with no resolution, they must both forfeit the card and no one gets it.

I have used this game after a Movie Talk, after practicing the new vocabulary and just before a Quizlet Live! game, and after a story. We always wait to use this game until after the students have been exposed to the vocabulary and structures sufficiently to be successful with ¡Pégalo!.

Here is an example of the game:

Here is an example of a card for a Movie Talk

Teacher: There is a little girl with large blue eyes, blonde hair, and a blanket over her head. 

You can give other descriptions too, but I wait to give the most obvious clue at the end of my description. If I have only one card with a little girl on it, I may say something like:
there is a room with cracked paint, a bed, and a person. The person is....
This way, you are able to get them listening more. If you are doing one for vocabulary practice, I typically give the translation or the definition and the kids must find the card I am defining. If you want the game to be a bit more challenging, I will have the kids place half the deck of vocabulary cards face side up in the target language and half down in English (you can do this with flashcards and vocabulary too). For the following card, I would simply give the translation: grapadora
An activity we do in class is called Visual Vocabulary to help them use words  in sentences using visuals. They must find visual representations of words they are struggling with and place it in our classroom Padlet. I then print them out for each class and we use these cards for practice.

This is an example of a vocabulary card.

The person that has the most cards, wins the round. This is a low-tech activity that is fun, engaging, and a great way to practice vocabulary and structures.

Movie Talks!

Movie Talks are such a wonderful way to practice repetition in the target language while using technology. We begin by finding a movie short on YouTube. I found one that was perfect for practicing the past tense. "Anya" is such an endearing story, the kids responded positively to this activity.

This story is such a wonderful way for students to learn about real situations across the globe while using the target language at a comprehensible level. The story of Anya is about an orphaned girl who arrives at an orphanage in Russia back in 1996. We practiced words such as "era" ad "tenía". I pre-taught many of the words I knew they did not know ahead of time. WE created signs and/or motions for many of them. 

I did the Movie Talk with them and stopped frames and discussed each one in Spanish, asked questions, and reflected on the situation in the story, we then played the video with sound without interruptions. The kids responded very positively to the story.

So, it was such a great lesson in past tense, I created a story using the vocabulary words we were working on and had my students "Volleyball Read" it together. It was strictly a narration and I purposely chose not to include dialog. It was a great success! 

I took this lesson even further, and had them create a cartoon that plugged in the possible dialog or thoughts, of the characters in the frames they chose. Using Snagit, we cut frames from the movie short and used these to create our very own comic strips. They chose 3-6 frames, used PicMonkey to create a comic strip with the "collage" tool, then they inserted word/thought balloons with unique the text features.The beauty of this lesson, was the fact that the kids had to insert the dialog in the target language that was not present in the story. They had to infer what the characters might be thinking or saying since there was no dialog in the movie (with the exception of two single word phrase). This lesson was exciting for them and gave them skills to create. They included this in the e-portfolios as well and gave some great feedback. They were very excited to create these from scratch. I loved that it was evident what they inferred in the frames they chose.