Potomac World Languages: August 2018

First meeting
Wednesday September , 1:00- 2
IS Room 184

Agenda

Ice breaker and introductions
Summer share- travels, conferences
Department Theme and Feedback (WL Sequence link)
Breakout to work in teams

Vista Supersite Tutorials: Click on the link

Supplemental Resources:

Please let me know if you are interested in using subscriptions to websites for your classes.

One that has been used by many in the past is Newsela

El Mundo En Tus Manos

Games:

Jenga, Headbands, Scrabble, Bingo, Fly Swatter, Verbo, Charades, Pictionary, Word Scrambles, Mad Libs

Here are some beginning of the year suggestions for review time.

Factile:

Create an online quiz game board in minutes

It's free, easy and loads of fun!

Now with Thinking Music!

Story Train:

Learning Goal(s): Forming sentences in target language; using vocabulary in context
How to Play: Students are each given a piece of paper with a sentence written on it. These sentences are story starters and are all different, but the main subject is underlined. Students are required to add onto the story by writing their own sentence below it. The catch is that they are to use the same subject and underline it (to keep the story intact), and they are to use some targeted requirement (the past tense, specific vocabulary, etc.). This requirement can be the same requirement each time they write a sentence, or it can be a new requirement each time. They then fold the original sentence the teacher wrote and pass it to the person next to them so that all the next person can see is the sentence the previous student just wrote. Play for however many rounds you want, and then have students open up their paper-fans and read the stories.
Special Considerations:

Use a timer to keep the pace going so students feel accountable not to procrastinate.
Make sure you make it clear that this activity that encourages creativity, but not inappropriate responses.

Scavenger Hunt:

Who doesn’t love a language learning Scavenger Hunt?

This one can be played individually or in teams. This would be great in a park, a playground, a field or any large open space where students can exercise those legs and roam around. (A scavenger hunt inside the classroom is chaos with a capital “C.”)

Give the class a list of 10-15 things they need to find. For example, in a German class you can include words like stein (rock), blume (flower) or holz (wood). Throw in some shockers that gain them triple points, like wurm (worm) or vogel/biene (bird/chick). They don’t have to physically collect all the objects, either. They could write a list, take pictures or do drawings once they find them.

Some of the items might be more challenging to locate, but your students will never forget the German words that they learn in the process of digging for a wurm.

You can throw in adjectives to add specificity to the task. For example, they aren’t just looking for any flower, but a “rote blume” (red flower).

After 30 minutes, blow your whistle signaling the class to meet at a designated spot. The student with the most correct items wins! (Give the class one minute to be at the meeting place. Late arrivals get appropriate point deductions.)

Two Facts and a Fib:

The game: You read three sentences aloud. Two of the sentences are true. One is false. The students determine which sentence is the fib.

So for example, you can read the following three sentences in the language being studied:

Bears can run faster than horses.
Bears have a bad sense of smell.
Bears are omnivorous.

And the students would have to identify the fib–in this case, #2.

Notes: Put the text of the questions on a slide behind you. You can make the questions as linguistically easy or difficult as you want, but if you want to use challenging language, put up pictures on the slide to serve as hints. Also, this is a good exercise for test review, since you can pick and choose the vocab and grammar you want to use.

(please post any other ideas or shares in the comments at the end of the post!)

SYA News!

Take a look at numbers and programming. Our SYA representative, Enrique Granados, will be coming in the fall to talk with students.