During the first week of school, we do
our best as teachers to make sure our lesson plans are complete from bell to
bell. It really is important to
establish this during the first few days so students know that we will use
class time to be productive and then they will not expect “free time.” However, even best laid plans fall short at
times. Then we are left with an awkward
5 to 10 minutes with nothing left to do except allow the students to talk or
work on other homework…this is not a good way to start the year. Furthermore, I don’t know about you, but my
heart would always sink when the principal would do a walk-through and my
students were off-task with seemingly “nothing to do” all because the lesson
plan ended early.
Here is a great game (with minimal
preparation!) to fill in left over minutes!
(We play these games in Spanish class, but they could be easily adapted
to any language class!)
¡Vocabulary Hot Potato! (¡Papa
caliente!) This works especially well
for Spanish II and up (once students have learned enough vocabulary.) Use an alphabet die from the game Scattergories (or
you can purchase your own online at Ebay, etc.)
Have students get into groups of 4 to 6.
The teacher rolls the die and lets the students know the letter. As soon as you announce the letter, use a
timer for 1 minute. Students have to go
around the circle within their group saying words that begin with that letter
of the alphabet. When the timer goes off,
the student who was up to say the next word is “out.” (So, this encourages the students to try to
keep it going quickly and stay in the game.)
The student that is “out” is eliminated for the remainder of rounds
until there is finally a “winner” (last one standing.) With groups of 4 to 6, you will be able to
play several times (so those who get “out” will get to play again in a few minutes.) This game is exciting and students are
surprised at how many words they do remember.
What a great way to review vocabulary!
(Reward the “winners” with candy or your own reward system of bonus
points, etc. to keep them motivated to play.)
Variations of this Game:
(1)If
you don’t have an alphabet die, then just print out aset of cards with every letter of the alphabet and
randomly draw a card before each round. 
(2) To
make this less teacher-directed, purchase enough dice for each group to have
one, then students could roll their own die and keep a timer within the group
for each round. (Or, print a stack of
cards, as mentioned in number 1 above, for each group.) This makes it more
challenging as well as students may not hear other groups shouting out words
within the same category (letter).
(3) Play
without a die…
You will find a lot more ideas like these
in my 125 Koosh Ball Activities and my Arrebato Games in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!
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| My Spanish 2 Go Tpt Store |
You can plug in the letters into wheeldecide.com and put that up on your projector/smartboard so that kids can see what letter is up. Since some letters are harder than others, perhaps you use Scrabble's letter frequency to assure the more common letters will be just that, more common.
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