¡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.

Spanish Novel Reviews

Students playing a game that required the use of QR codes. The front of the card provided the questions and the back provided the answers.

We begin our class with SSR (Silent Sustained Reading) each day. We have many novels available so my students have choice in their reading. These novels can be found on the TPRS Publishing website. Their semester project was to creatively present a review of their favorite novel read this semester. 

This was no ordinary presentation. I decided to give my students a challenge and put a twist on things as they had to present their project through the perspective of a person, place, thing other than the main character; but the biggest challenge was that they could not use PowerPoint, Word (or any other word processing tool) or posters. I gave them a list of project ideas and told them they were not limited to this list, it was just there to help spark their creativity. I had some amazing projects and they were very creative.

Some of the more creative projects came in the forms of board games, skits, and animations. 

I found that allowing for creativity and giving my students this opportunity to really think out of the box, they surprised themselves. In their reflections, many mentioned how proud they were of their level of creativity and truly enjoyed this project.