#89 - 101 Ways to Trick your Students into Reading

Students race to circle the Spanish word

Someday I will write a book titled, "101 Ways to Trick your Students into Reading the Same Text Again" or, at the least, submit a conference session proposal on it. I really don't have 88 other posts on this blog on this subject, but I'm willing to bet I have that many ideas that I've used in my Spanish classes in the last 19 years!

When I create activities or games, I tend to make ones in which students work with a partner or in groups of three to help keep all students engaged. But I changed it up a bit today.

First, I did a MovieTalk of a super short film clip, "El mejor de la clase", with my Spanish 1 students. The instructions and lesson plans are  from Martina Bex's (The Comprehensible Classroom) SOMOS 1 Unit 02 curriculum. In the curriculum Martina included a "basic script" of what happens in the video to guide teachers on how to do a MovieTalk. After completing the MovieTalk, I read the script to my students, while clarifying, sketching, gesturing and asking questions as I read the script.

Then I asked students to tell me 5 words that they still had a question about or were unsure of. Following that, I noticed the students needed some type of movement. I made an on-the-spot decision (what teacher doesn't do that on a regular basis?) to split the class into two groups and play a game similar to Find It. However, instead of working in small groups, I used the script that was projected on the board. I numbered the students so they could follow the order and keep the game moving (instead of deciding each round which student went next).

A student from each team went to the board with a marker in hand. I said the word in English and they had to read the text in order to find the Spanish word. When they found it, they had to circle the word before the other student did in order to earn a point for their team.

I kept it moving at a fast pace by not having them erase the circle they had drawn. Each student had several turns at the board and it took 6 minutes or less. It took the place of our 2nd Brain Break today because it had everyone up and moving around.

The beauty of using this particular script is that (1) it is comprehensible, of course, and (2) many words are used multiple times throughout the text. When I called out words that were used several times in the text, there was a greater possibility that students wouldn't try to circle the exact same word at the same time (helping to lesson the chances that it would turn into a contact sport).