So if this happens to me, it will surely happen to my students! This is when I was inspired by a popular game where one has to guess what is on the card (placed on one's fore heard) via the descriptions provided by their teammates.
At the time I decided to pilot this activity, my intermediate students where learning about direct and indirect object pronouns. I would love to say that I am textbook free, however my school is simply not there yet. So, what is one to do when teaching this complicated grammar topic to high schoolers while engaging them in the target language? Take them on a trip!
Every student was going to get "ready" to take a trip to an exotic Spanish-speaking country and therefore they had to prepare themselves. We took the vocab from the end of the chapter and in groups started creating detailed descriptions about them.
For example:
La maleta: La haces en tu casa. Lleva tu ropa en las vacaciones. La facturas en el aeropuerto.
La playa: Puedes nadar en ella y tomar el sol. Tiene arena y puedes relajarte aquí. Está cerca del mar.
El hotel: Tiene muchas habitaciones. Es donde duermes cuando estás de vacaciones. Tiene muchos huéspedes.
When all our vocab had unique descriptions made, I created a quizlet to let students practice it at home, and to use it as a warm up activity (side note: my students are obsessed with quizlet live! Try it!)
At this point, the process of creating descriptions became second nature to them so it was time to challenge them with my circumlocution cards. Each one provides them with a prompt to use in their description.
For example
Lo /la (s) usas para....
Es necesario ...
NOW WHAT??? Time to REALLY challenge them. I made copies of the task cards and I made copies of our vocabulary words. In teams, students would select a vocab word and the teammates would use different circumlocution cards to give them hints about the word the student had to guess.
This has become one of their preferred warm up activities. The best part is that now that they understand the expectations, I have been able to throw in new vocab and they have rose to the occasion of creating fascinating ways to describe these new terms.
This has become one of their preferred warm up activities. The best part is that now that they understand the expectations, I have been able to throw in new vocab and they have rose to the occasion of creating fascinating ways to describe these new terms.
Give it a try by downloading it HERE.
If you use it in your classroom, leave me a comment. Tell me how it went. Would you change anything? Add anything?
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