Ten affective activities to play and learn with alphabet letters

Every English teacher has given classes in which he or she has taught students the sounds of letters and has given support for them to spell their first and last names. Even though letters appear in the first levels, it is not unusual even for intermediate students to have some trouble spelling. 

In this post I share 10 affective activities for you to expand your activity repertoire beyond singing the ABC song and playing hangman. I call them affective because we always have to play using our affect, either by choosing words we like, creating strategies, or just playing. Make sure you have 3 or 4 alphabet sets for these activities for a small group of students. If you are with a larger group, you will need many more. 

Here I share some creative alphabet activities that will engage your students. 

1. Choosing words you like: here students choose words that they have read or listened in a story and then they write these, spell them and say why they like them. This activity can be done in the following two ways: students can choose the word and write them and other students check and spell or the student who chose the word can spell and other students have to guess and write it with the letters. Make sure that students always share why they have selected that word. If your students are really motivated, you can even invite them to make a song with the words the group has chosen!


2. Letter theater: here you can create a scenario with your students in which they add things that can be seen in a certain place. You can decide with them any place, ranging from a spaceship, the classroom, a kitchen or the beach. Each student adds one piece at a time.

You can have students use a structure such as "I see a/an ... ", "Have you seen there is a/an ... ?" or any other that you are working with. After you finish the setting, you can ask students in pairs to remember what each letter stands for and even to create a story with all these components.

Here you have a beach setting with the following elements starting from the bottom to the top: whale, fish, wave, surfer, sand, child and her mother, seagull, cloud and the sun!

And advanced variation would be to give all students a chosen combination of letters and they come up with a setting.

3. Letter interaction: here students pick a letter and say a thing that starts with that letter. If one student has chosen B and a banana, he or she can pretend to be eating it. Another  student can have a B which is a butterfly that suddenly flies away, and a third one can have a U for an umbrella that he has in case it starts raining.  Once learners have their things you can ask them to exchange the things they have for others, ask them which go together, make a story, or even line up according to some criteria (size, price, etc).

Variation: you can have the first person starting with a letter and a thing and the next has to do something related to that first thing. Let's say the first students has a Flower, then the second has a Bee, than the next one Honey, and another the Sun, etc. It is easier if you allow students to choose the letter instead of having them come up with something with the letter they have been given.

4. Letter story with words that begin with the letter: here students make sentences with each word starting with the letters that are in a certain order.

Students can make the following sentences for the letters in the sequences above: 

In the easy variation students can insert other words to make their sentence: 

An elephant watched a duck climbing on a white goose. 

In the harder variation students can only use words that start with the letters:

Once upon a time many lions ate spinach. 

5. Anagrams: in this classic activity students write a word for every letter of their names. These words can be adjectives that are characteristics of the students, verbs that they like to do, or things they have. As you have probably thought this is a great activity for students to introduce themselves. The words can either cross any letter of a student's name of can start with the letters in a student's name.

Anagrams be done both at the beginning and at the end of courses. In the beginning students do their own names and at the end students do the name of one of their classmates.


6. Scrabble: in a similar way students make a crossword writing words about a certain topic using the letters they have available. You can play it individually or you can have them playing it in groups.

7. Wordsearch: here you can prepare a wordsearch like the one below for students to find words related to a certain topic. The catch here is for you to tell students only the topic, and not the actual hidden words.

See you can find five words in this wordsearch that I have prepared for you. The topic is teaching. Write the words in the comment session below!

8. Guess before I finish spelling it: a fun way to play with the letters is this game that I play with with my students. I start spelling a word and students go finding the letters and writing the words. The challenge is for them to discover the word before I spell it until the end. It's quite fun!

9. Socratic Answers: here students have to answer questions using words that start with the letter that they have chosen. Example for a students that got the letter B:

What's your name? Boris
Where are you from? Bulgaria
What's your favorite food? Bulgarian banitsa - contribution from Mineva Rositsa! Thank you!
What do you do during your free time? Bake cakes
What is your favorite sport? Basketball

 

10. Domino: in this easy and fun activity students make word chains always using the first and last letters of the words that have been played. As a challenge you can tell students that they have to close the chain finding a word that starts with the first and last letters of the words in the beginning and in the end of the chain. In the picture here that word could be "sum".

And here you get the traditional bonus activities! Gotta make the reader satisfied! 

Bonus 1 - Scrambled letters: here you give the scrambled letters of a word and then students have to guess and write the word. You can give one hint at a time to make the students discover it. You can tell the context where the word is used, if it's a verb, and so on. Then students do the same to each other. 

Bonus 2 -  Bananagram: in this game a group of students has to use all their letters they have to make a crossword like the one in the picture. In order for them to achieve this goal they will need to change their words several times. Getting the actual game is really nice, but you will need many sets to play with a large classroom. The plastic letters will do fine and you can just use the rules of the game. 

Bonus 3: Make a letter doll: I saved the most creative to the end! I always like to present different kinds of material without telling students what we are going to do with them. I remember being with this very creative girl that started making letters characters as soon as I put the letters on the floor. It really pays of wait and see what your students will come up with!                                                                                                                                                                         You can them use the letters here to describe the personality of the character and the things it likes doing. Our character here has white hair, and it is very elegant, it's a violent and likes to fight, but it can be docile sometimes. It has a watch and a medal for playing soccer! 

Wow! What a fun-tastic post!
I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Do you have any different activities do you do with letters?
Share them in the comment area below. I will love to hear from you!



Hugs,

Juan


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Thank you!

Learning English Affectively with Taboo Cards

  

"Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens."

Henry Miller

I simply love playing with cards and flashcards because the number of ways in which they can be used is countless. When we, as teachers, explore and create novel ways of playing with language we allow learners to live language playfully as well. This fascination with play and language led me to write a post you might have read called "Fifty affective ways to use flashcards", in which I explored how students can live language affectively and make it their own. 

Today I explore the very famous taboo cards that probably many of you have already seen around, played with your friends, or maybe even have already used in class. Taboo is a card game in which players have to describe a thing without using the most common words associated with it. These words are considered them taboo and shouldn't be said. 

Taboo was originally designed for native English-speaking adults and one can notice that it requires a good command of language in order to play it properly. I have in this post adapted, created, and organized a list of 30 different ways in which taboo cards can be used. Enjoy it!

1. Avoiding forbidden words: in this traditional version, the player has to describe the word in red but he/she can not say the words that are in green. As you can imagine this requires a lot of language command, which is not something most students can do. In this original version, it is important to model and brainstorm with students some strategies that can be used to convey meaning when one does not know a certain word.

2 Using all the words: in a simpler variation one player has to say all the words that are in green without saying the one in red. The other player has to guess the word on top. Guessing is very easy and the real challenge is in being able to use all the words. This scaffolding builds confidence and promotes fluency.

3. Brainstorming words: in this variation one player says the word on top and the other player has to brainstorm words until he is able to complete all the words that are in the list. If words are hard, the challenging player can give the first letter of the words that are missing. The last word is usually the hardest!

4. Delivering a  speech: in a harder variation from the previous one, the challenging player says "tell me everything you know about watches" and then the other player has to build sentences talking about the topic until he/she uses all the words in the card, which are hidden from him/her. The challenging player signals and counts as the words in the card are said by the other player. A time limit can be added to add some tension.


5. Leading words to be said: here the topic is given and both players form a partnership to say the words. One player gives hints in order for the other to say the word. Let's say one player wants the other to say wrist, he/she can then say "it's where you wear it" or leave a gap for the other person to complete such as "you wear your watch around your ... ". You can have a pile of cards and count the number of cards a pair or group is able to do during a pre-established amount of time.

6. Spelling words: one player reveals the topic and he starts spelling the words that are listed. The other player has to try to discover the words before they are totally spelled.

7. Drawing words: one player reveals the topic and draws the words that described in the card for the other player to guess and write these next to the drawing that was just made. In a harder variation the topic is not revealed in the beginning.

8. Acting the words: a pair creates a small sketch and another pair has to discover the words that were represented. The acting group should really emphasize the written words and gets points if the words are correctly guessed. Here again the topic can be revealed in the beginning or not.

9. Writing a poem/ rapping the words: students can write a poem or create a rap containing all the words. The topic can be the title, part of the chorus, or even not be mentioned at all!

10. Brainstorming extra words: another way to play with taboo cards is to have students in small groups collectively saying and writing all the other words that they think go together with the topic word.

11. Checking the dictionary: students use their phones to check an online dictionary and see if the words that are listed are part of the description of the word used in the dictionary.

12. Googling words: students can google the topic word and then check if all the words in the card are found in the first three search results. Another google possibility is to type the five words and see if the topic will appear in the result.


13. Creating a crossword: students can create a crossword for the their card connecting the words in a grid and creating definitions for each one of them. A booklet with all their crosswords can be photocopied and given for all students to solve.

14. Playing the multiple hangman: the objective is for the challenged player/group to guess the topic word. In order to do this they play multiple hangman with all the describing words at the same time. Once they go figuring the words then they can guess the topic. The topic is not part of hangman and can be inside an envelope. If they guess it it wrongly the game is over.

15. Guessing with one hint at a time: one player has to guess the topic being only given one hint at a time. If they risk and it's wrong they lose their card or their turn. The player that guesses the topic keeps the card. This one was inspired by an old Brazilian TV show called "Which is the song?".

16. Making a conversation: a pair creates a conversation in which words appear in the same order in the conversation exchanges. Each exchange should have only the word that is listed without any of the other ones.

17. Unscrambling words: one player gives the topic and scrambles the letters of the listed words. The other player has to unscramble and discover the words. A harder variation is to give the scrambled words without saying what the topic is.

Bar histogram showing interviews.

18. Getting statistics: each student gets one card student talks to three other students one at a time and asks them to talk about the topic. While listening, this student marks down the number of times that the listed words are said. He/she does not interfere or reveal what the words are. Once the three conversations were held, this students reveals the statistics to the rest of the class. Here students can even be taught how to build an histogram like the one you see in the picture on the left.


19. Column Dictation: One player gets three cards and reveals the three topics. Then he/she dictates randomly the words that are in the three cards. The challenged player has to write them under the correct topic. Then players check the answers and discuss about the words that were hard and could fit more than one topic.

20. Interviewing the topic: one player or a group makes one question with every word that is listed. One person responds as being the topic. This is great fun as we have improbable situations where concepts, fruits, and professions speak!

21. Crossing cards: can you build sentences about a topic using the words from another card. This variation gets students to be playful and invent situations in which words can be combined.

The pyramid composition looks like this!

22. Writing a pyramid composition: the top sentence has the first word, the one below the first and second words, until the last one has all the five words. The composition can be done graphically centralized in a page.

23. Choosing the best words: students are asked to rate the words given in the list and put them in a list according to how relevant they think they are to describe the topic. Other words can be suggested to be included in the list.

24. Listening the words: one player makes a short composition or deliver a speech about the topic using all the words. The other player has to read it or listen to it and try to find the words that were listed. Tell students to pay attention to how words are said.

25. Making their own taboo cards: you can have students write their own cards inside a topic you are studying. Model how they can be written to make sure they are good for playing. Once you have them made you can play with them in any of the other ways described here in this post!


Most of these activities can be done both in speaking as well as in writing. I have in all activities preferred to have students in pairs as a way of maximizing student speaking time.

To get started you can:
Making the cards with the students,
Find lots of ready made cards on the internet,
Or buy the following games which have easier language for young learners.






Which is your favourite activity?
Do you have any idea that is not here?
Have you ever played taboo with your students?


Send you all a big hug from Tokyo,

Juan


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50 affective ways to use flashcards with young learners!

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

Napoleon

Flashcards, Flashcards. How can we live without them? What can we say about them?

I bet every single language teacher around the world has at least a set of flashcards. Some like me, certainly have a collection. I would say that teachers love flashcards because they are visual, clear, objective, and holdable. They can also be used in many different and creative ways.

I have compiled here 50 affective and effective ways in which flashcards can be used to foster engaging and significant language learning in your classes. Enjoy!

1. Say how you like it: here students get a card, say the flashcard as they like them, and pass it to the next student. You can model by saying words such as ice cream with a yummy intonation and snake with a scary one. The very nice thing is that students may have multiple and different opinions about the things in the flashcards and they can show their likes and dislikes just by how they say it. This might be a great opportunity to present them the language they need to express themselves. This is definitely one of my favourite ways of working with flashcards and because of this I have chosen it to be the first of this list!



2. Slowly uncover the picture: this is a classic. Slowly uncover the picture for students to guess what you have. You can uncover the picture from different sides or even have an envelope with a hole in which students see just a part of it. You can do it as during language presentation or when you are activating language students have already seen. If they have seen the pictures already, they will give you the answer in miliseconds!

3. Slowly uncover the word: similar to uncover the picture, but here you use cards that only have words. What I like to do here is to have students brainstorm all the words they can say that use the letter or letters that I am showing. The more letters I show, the more obvious the word gets. Some variations include showing just a little bit of the top or bottom of the word. Put the word upside down to get them crazy and excited!

4. Whisper and guess: here I get a card and either whisper it or just move my mouth and students have to guess it. Once they get the game, they can mingle doing it to their peers as a way of activating language previously presented. When they guess the word, they can exchange cards

5. Say it only if it's right: the teacher shows the flashcards and calls out a word. If the word is what the teacher is holding, students say the word. Once they get it, you can demonstrate it with one student and have students playing the game with each other.

6. Say it if you like it: similar to the last activity, but here the teacher calls out the words and students repeat it only it they like them. It's really interesting to listen to the number of people each card gets. Some of them get nobody!

Two possible answers allow
 children to choose their favourite.

7.  Apple or pear?: this is a very easy activity for students who are beginners. Each student is given two flashcards and they make simple questions just by saying the names of the cards such as "apple or pear?". Once a student answers one of the options, she/he gets that card. Students take turns to make sure that everybody stays with two cards. Then students change pairs and continue practising the vocabulary items.




8. Mime: teacher shows a card, says it, and everybody mimes it. Then teacher gets a card, mimes it, and everybody has to guess it. Students do it to each other and exchange cards before changing pairs.

9. Circle of process: this is another classic. The teacher puts a sentence such as "I went to the market and bought ______ ". Students sit in a circle and are given a card each which they are not to show others. The first student in the circle says the sentence, shows his/her card and completes the sentence saying the word represented in his/her card. The second student then says the sentence completing with the word the first person has said, and then show his/her card before saying his/her part. If a student does not remember a word, the student can show the card. A variation can be done with the whole class saying it instead of the next student in the circle.

10. Spell and guess it: here you spell a word and students guess what you have. Here it helps if you have flashcards with word and picture or only with the word to make sure that they are spelling words correctly.

11. Draw it and write it: give students a sheet of paper with a word written on top and invite students to draw the word. Then tell students to fold the top part of the sheet and bluetac these on the board. Get other students to come and write the words below the pictures students have drawn. Other students can come to the board and tick/ make corrections on how words have been written. The very nice thing about this activity is that you can use the flashcards they have created for all the other activities we have here!

Drawing bingo works on
their listening skills. 

12. Listen and clap: distribute one card per child and tell them that you will tell a story and then every time they listen to their word they have to clap. Make sure you have a list of the words or that you write the story before hand in order to make sure that each word is said several times.

13. Drawing bingo: give students a 4x4 or 5x5 matrix and spread flashcards on the floor. Demonstrate how they can draw the flashcards they like in any way on their bingo cards. Once they have done it, you can tell a story showing the cards you say and students cross their drawings when you say them. A variation is to have students also write the words instead of just drawing them.

14. Make a sentence with the word: you pick a flashcard and say some sentences using this word to model different possibilities. You can then give each student one card for them to say a sentence to a peer. After saying their sentence students exchange cards.  Circulate in the classroom and get some of their sentences to be worked on the board.

15. Ranking: you can show how much you like the things you have in the flashcards by making a list. Then ask students to make their lists either drawing or writing and then to share these with their peers. You can here again pre-teach some language they might need when commenting on their colleague's list. A very nice variation is for students to say how much they think other students in class rank  things and then check their predictions.

Would it be hard for you to
discover you are a lemon? 

16. Discover what I am: here you hold a card and students have to discover what it is. You can have yes/no questions on the board to help students with the questions. Once they get how the game works, you can have them doing it in pairs. A great variation is to get peg a card to the back of each student and they have to discover what they have on their back by asking others while mingling.





17. Complete the words in the story: here the teacher tells a story and leaves gaps for students to complete using the flashcards. Example: Once there was a (students pick a card) that was happy going home when suddenly one (students pick a card) appeared. They started talking about life and then the first card said it had lost its (students pick a card). A variation for more advanced students is for them to make a story in pairs to be completed by their peers. Great fun!

18. Make a story: there are many ways in which students can make a story with flashcards. One way is having students tell only one story with a sentence at a time when the card is turned up, another is giving students 4 cards each and they can choose how they continue the story, and a third is you give pairs 6 cards and together they create their story which is then presented to the whole group.

Would you exchange a butterfly for an apple?

19. Exchange:  each student receives a card and then you ask one of them if he would like to exchange his card for yours. Give one or two reasons and then listen to his/hers. If both agree, exchange cards. Students mingle and consider the exchanges. Here again having language they might need on the board is essential.

20. Insert it in the conversation: students are supposed to carry a normal conversation and when they see the flashcard they insert the word linking it to the last topic they were talking. Let's say students are talking about dogs, you show the egg card, and then they comment that dogs do not like eating eggs, etc. I got this one from a television show.

21. Shop: this is a another classic one that children simply love. Students set up a shop and they have to sell what they have. You can have shops with fruits, animals, objects, or even with parts of the house and actions How do you sell swimming or watching tv? Make sure you model first and have language they will need on the board.

22. Talk to it: what would you tell a butterfly if it could listen to you? what about to your bed, your tap, or to a spoon? This is the chance students always have wanted to express themselves in creative ways. It can be done orally or with cards spread around the room and students write their creative sentences on sheets of paper. Students can then vote on the best sentence.

23. Interview the flashcard: how does a car feel to be a car? What are the things it likes doing? What are its worries? Here one student is the thing in the flashcard and the other or others ask him questions. You can have students come up with the questions before raffling the cards. Great fun!

24. Watermelon: every sentence that you say has to contain that thing you have in the flashcard. If you have a watermelon, you say:  "How watermelon are you?",  the other person says "I'm watermelon fine" and the conversation goes on. The winner is the one that always remembers to insert the word in the sentence. Go changing the words. Just a silly and funny one for those moments in which you have still time left.

What did the flower tell the gate?

25. One flashcard talks to the other: students become their flashcards and have to start a conversation. We have then for example a flower talking to a house. What does it say? Maybe it says "I would like to know what is inside of you, but I will die if you talk me out of the ground. " and the house can answer " but I can put you in a vase and you will be in the living room where we get a lot of sun."

Cards can even talk about a third card saying what the like about it and what they think should be different. Gossiping flashcards in other words!


26. For and against: what are all the advantages of the flashcards? What are all the disadvantages? You can have half the class supporting one position and the other half the contrary. Each pair can have a card they are talking about.
Example: + Eggs are delicious. They can be cooked in many different ways. They are not expensive. - Eggs break easily. They get rotten. They are messy.

27. Putting things inside a house: where would you put the things you have in a house? Make a big house using the board or different parts of the classroom. Students can put the elephant in the kitchen to help with the cooking and cow in the garden to receive people that are arriving, etc. Millions of possibilities. You can have students using a specific structure such as "What if we had", "I suggest having", or any other you are covering.

When was the last time you saw an elephant? 

28. Last time I saw: the name says it all. Students talk about the last time they interacted or used that thing. You can ask students to use WH questions. You could have the following: When was the last time you saw an elephant? Who were you with when you saw it? What did you feel when you saw it?

You can again here the questions already written and students only have to ask them. Answers are hilarious!

29. Domino: students play domino and to place the card they have to say something that both cards have in common. Students can talk about size, color, price, what they are used for, etc. How would you find a similarity between a brush and a ball? Both start with B, maybe?

30. Venn Diagram: using two hollahoops you can create a venn diagram just like the one on the picture on the left. You can give the categories and they sort out the cards or they create different categories and others have to guess "the secret" of their diagram.

It can be done both with cards with pictures or words.


31. Alliteration: students try to match adjectives that start with the first letter of the word. You can have a funny friendly flower, a gourgeous gigantic gate, a docile dog, etc.

What are other uses for a soccer ball? 

32. Other uses: what can a soccer ball we used for besides playing soccer? We can use it a dog toy, as a door stopper, as decoration, etc.

33. Present: what would you do if somebody gave you an apple on your birthday? What about a butterfly? Play with students the reactions they would have and how they have sometimes only to accept and thank. I usually play with family members saying for example: your mother gave you an apple, your sister a butterfly, your cousin a dog. You can also reverse it and ask what they would like to give each other in the classroom and why.


34. Make me say it: Students get 3 cards each which can not show these to their peers. Their objective is to make the other person say that word. Let's say a student has ball, he/she can ask the other "what do you need to play soccer?".

35. Hangman: students can use the cards that have written words to play hangman when they are still learning how to write the words. Words can be spread on the floor to make it easier.

36. Mini auto-biography: here the student shares his/her lifestory with the thing in the flashcard. I have learned this activity many years ago from Mario Rinvolucri at Pilgrims.

37. Family tree: build a family tree with the flashcards that you have. Who would be the father? Why? What about the mother? If they have children, who are these children? Why?

38. Describe and draw: here you can model by describing a flashcard with details while students draw it.  Help students make questions about it while drawing. After they finished drawing they can compare their creation with the flashcard. Then you can have students in pairs with  one student describing the flashcard and the other drawing. Then they check when they are finished and the one who described draws another flashcard.



39. Imagine and check: Ask students to close their eyes and imagine the flashcards you are going to say. Then show them and they tell you or each other how they saw each one of the words and how different they are from the flashcard you have. It works best if you use flashcards with real pictures instead of cartoons. Great for comparatives!


40. Have a sketch with them: you act out that you enter you house, pat the dog, have an apple, and watch some television while taking off your socks. You have just used five flashcards in a very funny way. You can even say the words in a monologue like: It's good to be back home. Hey Rex, what a lovely dog you are! Good there is still one apple left. Time for the game to start on tv, let me take off these socks! But make sure you do the actions entering the house flashcard, patting the dog flashcard, biting the apple flashcard and so on. Students can do sketches even having a dialogue with two or three people in which they have a situation in which the cards appear.

41. Brainstorm collocations: here students brainstorm all the collocations we can have with a certain flashcard. Let's think of some that go together with book: big, small, hardcover, heavy, light, old, new, etc. The focus here is not on working with the words on the flashcards, but really on how they can be used.

42. Forbidden words: have six cards in front of students and they are to have a conversation, but they can not say the words in the flashcards that have been displayed. You can go increasing the number of words of having different stations with different words.


43. Write it as it is: here students write the words according to what they mean. If they are writing cat, they will put whiskers in the C and create a tail. If it is the sea, they can create many waves repeating the word sea many times. If it is sun, they have rays around it. A variation is writing the words according to their size. Ant would be really tiny and elephant would be huge!

44. Odd one out: students choose four cards and create a code in which one of them does not belong. Other students have to guess it.

45. Year without it: how would your life be if you had to live one year without eating eggs? What about being with a dog? Not eating cake? You got the idea. This was inspired by those people that love making promises to suffer not eating something they really enjoy.

46. An entire day: similar to the last one, but the opposites. How would it be it you had to do what is in the flashcard for a whole day? Could you eat cake for a whole day? What about being with a dog? Smelling flowers is something you could handle? Here you can pre-teach language that they might need to express their emotional reactions.




47. Going to a desert island: which of these flashcards would you take to a desert island? You probably have heard or even played this classic game in which players have to justify their choices. Here students choose five cards and have to discuss with other students why their cards are important. pre-teach language that they might need in the discussion and demonstrate it with a student.



48. Biggest problem: what is the biggest problem a dog can have? Maybe it is not liking bones and everybody brings it a bone. Or maybe a dog can meow instead of barking. Students can use their creativity thinking about surreal problems for the flashcards.

49. Emotional thermometer: students choose a flashcard according to how they are feeling or how they have liked the class. A student can choose a dog because because he/she liked the class and because it was lively. A cake can be chosen because an activity was sweet. Students have to be a little bit older to understand the concept of making analogies. You certainly have to model it and explain it to your learners.

50. Matching couples: If the flashcards were couples which matches would we have? Maybe a tap goes with a bucket, a dog with a cat, fork with a spoon. Ok, you are probably thinking these are easy ones, but the real challenge happens when the matches are not that straight forward. Would a book match a house? What about a dog? Not really. A variation is to have to pile and a bachelor, then four cards are open and the best contestant marries the bachelor. Too crazy? Give it a try and tell me!



Wow! What a marathon of flashcard activities. It surely took me more than a month to get this post ready for you!

Do you use flashcards in any different way?
Write it in the comment and I will include your idea here!


Send you a big flashcard hug,

Juan


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Playing Games with Young Language Learners

In the beginning of this year I had the great pleasure of being back at Juan Uribe Ensino Afetivo, the language school for children that my sister and I founded in São Paulo, Brazil. 

I took a suitcase full of games and you can probably imagine how excited teachers were when they saw them.  I bet students and teachers are playing them a lot now. But how do you deal when suddenly a school receives around 30 new games? 

I prepared a games workshop in 3 parts: an introduction about the relation of games and language learning, exploring and playing the games, and creating best practices for games at school. Here I share what happened in this great morning with the group at school.

Games and language learning 

During the warm up I proposed teachers to remember and share the games they enjoyed playing in their childhood. I also invited them to discuss what they thought happened in their young learners' minds when they were playing games. These are some of the answers that came up:

After this warm up, we talked about how we could truly explore the best of games in our classes. It was clear we could not only play without objectives just because our students loved games and that we also couldn't focus so much on language learning to a point that we removed all the fun of playing a game. The challenge was to find this sweet spot where there is engagement, learning, and fun. 

A good game for language learning is the game that children would like to play in their own language, even when they are at home. I believe the best games for language learning are the ones that truly involve students both cognitively and affectively. 

Games involve learners cognitively when they have to concentrate, remember the rules, see what other players are doing, think of different scenarios and their possibilities, make decisions, and use language to express the richness of these thoughts. 

Games involve students affectively when students are transported to other realities and invited to experience different roles. Young learners can become pirates, bears, farmers, and while they are playing they can help a mouse run away from a cat, explore a haunted house, or even search a ship wreck for treasure. These new realities and roles allow students to think, improvise, create, and be funny in English. 

Exploring the games




We then moved to exploring the games, the part the group had been anxiously waiting for more than a week. I divided the games in four rounds according to their types: board games, cooperative games, and card games. I asked some riddles and the groups that were able to figure these out chose the game they would play and learn about. The process itself was also fun!

Teachers read the rules and worked together to figure out each game. Some of them were quite hard and it took groups some time to get started. The best way to learn a game is with someone who knows it and has played with it a couple of times. 

Tip: do not try to learn it with the students. I've tried it more than a couple of times and the time lost in getting it ready made students lose momentum. 


Teachers them had a blast playing the games and even thinking about how they could be played with the students. It was beautiful to see teachers exploring the new resources at the same time they were enjoying themselves. As each group of 5 teachers played only five games, there was a natural information gap that was created for them to discover later on their own how to play the other 15 games. 


Best practices for games at school

Wrapping up our morning the group emphasized that playing games during our classes is always a challenge, as we need to balance both play and language learning. The following school game rules were created at the end of our workshop:

1. Make sure you link the game to your student’s planning. Be careful with beautiful games that are not productive to your students' linguistic moment.

2.     Know your objectives before playing. Make sure you have an aim for your game, as it will allow you to stay focused on language learning while playing. 

3.     Explore the game before class: ask other educators, learn the rules, play it, and check any vocabulary you might need. Make sure you know and are able to explain the rules well.  Even so, take rules to class.

4.     Contextualize and relate it to the learners’ reality. Talk about what you know about the theme, creating a shared hook, before you start playing. Then comment if these situations happen in the game.

5.     Do modeling of both playing and language as it allows students to play and express themselves better. Create and write on the board structures to be used during the game. These can be said chanting or with different voices!

6.     Explore easy and hard versions of the game in different classes. Playing the game more than once with the same group is great for language learning as students are able to relive the game language.

7.     Receive contributions from students with an open heart. It’s ok if they would like to play it in a different way.  

8.     Talk about the experience after playing the game. Tell students about your favorite moments as a way of modeling for them to talk about theirs.

9.     Don’t make competition a big deal. Be perceptive of children’s anxiety. The importance is in being together enjoying the moment.

10. Teach students to take care of the game with its box, content, rules and pieces. Do not return the game to the shelf if there is a missing piece. Make the missing piece or write down what is missing.


And that was our productive and fun morning playing and learning about games in affective language learning. A morning to remember and share!

   
     I'd love to hear from you!
     Do you find it sometimes hard to balance playing and language learning? 
     How do you include games in your classes? Which are your favorite ones?


Send you a big frug!  (Check here what a frug is in case you do not know.)

Juan

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