One of the things I love about reading with my students is that after we finish each chapter, we can process with an input based activity. It is so much fun to see them actively listening and revisiting the events of each chapter of the book.

I wanted to share some of my favorite games we’ve played in the last couple of weeks.

Pop a Squat

This game is so much fun!

What you need: One set of 12 events from any text plus 4 funny actions in the target language like “take a selfie with the teacher” or “yell I am so smart”. 5-6 packs of balloons (these are only about $0.98 each. You need extras so you can be sure you have 16 of each color).

Divide the class into teams. Each team will have an assigned balloon color. The first student in the team runs to the chair, grabs a balloon, pops it, and reads the paper inside. If the paper is an event from the text, they just take it to the back of their row and save it until they have all 12 papers. If it is a command, they must do it before the next person comes up. My favorite was the selfie with the teacher!

Once they had all of the events, they had to put them in the order they occurred in the story. The first team to finish was the winner!

Cheaters

Divide the class into teams of 4-5. For each team, you will need a chair at the front of the room. All other students in the team will be lined up facing this person. The “hot seat” chair and the front chair of each row both need white boards, markers, and erasers.

You only need a set of comprehension questions!! I try to make about 12 about the text we are working with. The first teammate comes up to sit in the hot seat. This person and the player in the front row will both answer the comprehension question on their white boards (but they will not let anyone see what they’ve answered). Before I ask the person in the hot seat to reveal their answer, they have the option to “cheat” by trading boards with the person in the front row.

Some groups chose to cheat and some did not, but it was wonderful for the less confident kids to have the opportunity to get the answer right by using their teammate’s board!

This requires basically no set up, and many of the texts we use come with teachers guides that already have built in comprehension questions, so it is also very low prep for me!

The team with the most points at the end is the winner!

Cup-side Down

I saw this on a church youth group’s post and wanted to share it with my students by making it an educational version!

All you need are some comprehension questions, a white board (with marker and eraser) for each team, and solo cups in different colors.

I broke the class up into four groups. Each group had a color. Two groups put their cups facing up and two groups put theirs facing down. I actually used the colors of the cups to draw arrows on my board so students would remember which direction each color of cups should point.

We began with 10 cups for each team. I gave them a minute or two to set up their cups in the floor of our classroom. Then I asked the first comprehension question. Each team wrote their answer on the board. If they were correct, they earned an additional cup.

After the new cups were set up, I set a timer for 30 seconds. Teams had the full 30 seconds to try to turn all other teams in the wrong direction… BUT they have to keep an eye on their own cups too! They need to stay facing the right direction! It was hilarious. It’s hard to keep track of all of your cups AND keep flipping other teams cups.

We played about 8 rounds before we ran out of time. I added up the cups facing the right direction for each team, and the team with the most was the winner! Getting the questions correct is a big benefit because you have more cups out there so better odds of having the most turned the right direction!

Which one are you going to try?

I would love to hear your favorite! Be sure to let me know how it goes!

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