artsy info-gaps!

As you know if you read my blog regularly, info-gaps are some my favorite activities because students have a real purpose for communication.  I'd like to share a type of info-gap activity that's often a student favorite as well: drawing info-gaps.  I fell in love with them when I read about an activity called "Dress the Bear" in Curtain & Dahlberg's (2003) fantastic book, Languages and Children, Making the Match. (One of the few grad school textbooks that I seriously enjoyed reading!)

Ever since, I've adapted the activity several times to suit my students and courses.  In my versions for 6th and 7th grade Spanish, the students performed 3 basic steps:

1. Draw and color something (2 different examples below).  (Be sure to emphasize that their creation is a SECRET or they will get sooooo excited they'll announce what they're drawing and ruin part 3!)
2. Write sentences to describe what you created. (I found that my beginning learners needed this support to prepare themselves for the communicative part.  Moreover, this was a great chance for me to circulate and help students who were struggling with the grammar constructions.)
3. Pair up for communication! Take turns reading your sentences to your partner and listening to theirs.  As you listen, draw & color what they describe.

Here are a couple of the handouts that my students used for these activities. 

• 7th grade clothing & colors unit: "Dress Brutus"! Even students who weren't OSU fans LOVED "giving Brutus a makeover", converting Brutus to their team's colors (ugh...), making a girlfriend for Brutus, etc!  (Sorry, I didn't think to scan any actual student work, but these were usually hilarious!)

They drew a new outfit on the left Brutus, then drew their partner's description on the right-hand one.

•  6th grade animals & colors unit: "Wacky animals!"  My students LOVED any activity where they got to color animals crazy colors, including this one!

For this one, students designed their animals on the front and then used the blank back of the handout to draw their partner's animals.

I'll admit that I had my students do so many info-gap activities that they'd get tired of some of the simpler types.  (However, they would still rate them as activities they LEARNED the most from in post-unit surveys!)  Nevertheless, the creative element in these artistic ones has always generated high enthusiasm, even though they came later in the trimester.

If you're struggling to get your students excited about speaking in the target language, try an activity like this!  You'll be astonished as the energy level in your room skyrockets (in the TL)!

¡Vamos de compras!

Since my 6th & 7th grade programs are eliminated and I won't even be teaching Spanish anymore, I'm going to try to share a whole bunch of my favorite activities from those programs over the summer.

A favorite activity that I've done with several different topics (food and school supplies, and I can also see it being done easily with clothing, although I never got around to it!) is shopping / the marketplace.  It's just what it sounds like -- our classroom becomes a live marketplace or store where the kids buy and sell plastic realia (and pictures of items when I don't have enough!).  For money, I invested in a lovely set of fake-but-authentic-looking euros and the kids LOVED using them!  In addition to authentic money, there are several opportunities to weave culture into this activity, such as markets / small shops, cultural icon stores like El Corte Inglés, how to say prices, and even exchange rates.

two 7th-graders interacting at a "school supply shop"

Some students volunteer to be "shop owners" -- responsible for setting up their "store", handing items to the "customers" when they ask for them (listening), telling customers the cost of their items (speaking), and making change (life skill!).  To create several stations, I categorized the items into several specialty "shops" (bakery, fresh fruits & vegetables, butcher shop, dessert shop, etc.), giving each "shop" a big bag with their items to sell, signs, and money to make change. (Small shops are a cultural element common in Spanish-speaking countries anyway, but you could make specialized areas of a large store, depending on your situation.) Many of "shop owners" get into their role so enthusiastically that they'll "advertise" for their store, yelling our items and prices in the TL to attract more "customers"!

The other students are "customers", who have to make a shopping list on a budget (writing & life skill!), ask for the items they want (speaking), and pay the correct amount of money when asked (listening).  If they're interested, I try to let the shop owners swap with a customer partway through, so they can experience both roles.

While this activity tends to be SO engaging that some kids will try to slip into English more than usual at first, it's awesome once everyone gets going in the TL (like always, close monitoring is the key!).  The best part is when those super-enthusiastic students dive thoroughly into their role and start telling the "English-sneaking" kids "I don't speak English"!

I love it because it creates a completely authentic way to use language, plus the chance to "experience" some of those cultural elements!  As for the kids, they rush around with sparkling eyes and always list it as one of their favorite activities.

Los Famosos (communicative activity)

Another favorite activity my students do with numbers is "Los famosos".  During their numbers unit, my 6th graders don't learn to tell time but they do learn to talk about numerical personal information like birthdays, ages, and phone numbers.  To wrap everything up and practice towards the end of the unit, we do this activity:

front of a card

Each student gets a card with a famous person from one of our three culture-focus countries for the trimester (Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica in 6th grade).  They are now this person :-) and have to exchange personal information (one-on-one) with the other "famosos" in the class.

Each two-sided card has the person's picture and name on the front and personal information on the back.  Students walk around the room holding the front facing out so they can read their "own" information on the back and their classmates can see "their" picture and name.

back of a card

The students always get such a big kick out of why they are famous!  The most excited students are always the presidents and the athletes, but I included a wide range of celebrities, from actors and musicians to artists and writers.  I also made sure to include people of all different ages; the "famosos" range in age from teenagers to 90-year-olds!

In addition to their numbers unit vocabulary, they get to review other personal information and learn new vocabulary about jobs from why their person is famous.  To give their personal information correctly, they have to remember other cultural/linguistic concepts from the unit such as date format (DAY/MONTH/year), years ("one thousand nine hundred sixty-three"), and phone numbers ("two hundred fifty-five, ninety-nine, fifty-eight").  Plus, they get to learn about famous people from our three countries!

While they are interviewing their classmates, the students have to fill out a chart to record their classmates' information.  As in the "turistas" activity, the chart guides students in asking the questions and ensures that they have to understand the information they hear.

chart to fill in

Like many other activities I've shared, this one is a winner because it gets included as an answer to both "What activities did you LIKE this most?" AND "What activities helped you LEARN the most?" on the end-of-unit survey!

Turistas (communicative activity)

Wow, it has taken me forever to finish writing about the activities from the numbers/Spain unit that I wanted to share!  This one is my favorite by far, and also a student favorite, which is always exciting.  Half of the students are "tourists" visiting Toledo, Spain and the other half are "tour guides" with information about famous sights in the city.  Each "tour guide" stands in a certain spot in the classroom and the "tourists" work their way around the room "visiting" different sights.  Halfway through, we switch roles so everybody gets to be a "tourist" and everybody gets to be a "tour guide".

My students get really excited when it's their turn to be "tour guides". The "tour guides" each have a card with a color picture of their designated sight on the front and a copy of a real tourist information sheet that I got when I visited Toledo.  Many of them get really into their role and do a great job of "marketing" to the tourists by calling out the name of their place, holding up the picture, etc.

front of a "tour guide" card

Information sheet on the back of each "tour guide" card

When the "tour guides" talk to a tourist, they hold up the card so the tourist can see the front of the card and they can see the information on the back.  Information about their place is highlighted so they can find it easily.  They have to use this information to answer questions from the tourists in Spanish.  Since all numbers are written numerically on the information sheet, the tour guides have to really use their numbers vocabulary (plus all the extra cultural concepts we've learned, such as how to say phone numbers, how to read 24-hour times, and how to say prices) as they give the information.

Here's the original information sheet with no highlighting, in case you want to use it!

The "tourists" have a table with all the questions to ask at the top and rows to fill in information as they visit each place.  They get to record the numbers numerically, which means they have to understand everything their tour guide tells them.  Since these are all useful questions that they might have to ask while traveling or planning a trip, it's really authentic listening and speaking practice.

In addition to being a fun activity because it gets the students out of their seats and interacting authentically, this activity is usually one of the most-repeated answers to "Which activities helped you LEARN the most?" on our end-of-unit survey.

I've created a similar activity for my 6th graders with places around Quito, Ecuador.  (It's a little simpler because they don't learn how to tell time, but it works the same way.)  It takes a little research to create for a place you haven't visited personally, but many cities now have tourist resources posted on their websites that could be used as the basis for activities like this.

En Sevilla... (pair speaking activity)

Last week I shared a writing activity my 7th graders do with places in Madrid.  I was hoping to share a few more of my favorite activities from that unit, but life got in the way, as it often does.  So finally, a few days late, here's another activity I'm proud of: "Sights in Sevilla".

In this partner activity, students ask and answer questions to exchange information about famous sights in Sevilla, Spain.  I used this authentic information sheet from my trip to Sevilla (it's from the back of a map) to create the activity.

original Sevilla info sheet

Partner A and Partner B each have modified information sheets with critical information blacked out for SOME of the sights. (Thus, A can see information that B can't see and vice versa.)

  

(Partner A & B info sheets w/ opposite blacked out info.)

Each student has to ask his/her partner for the missing information (related to our numbers/time vocab) about each designated sight: opening time, closing time, and phone number.  (i.e."What time does the Museo Taurino open?" etc. -- you can see an example above the chart screenshots below.)  To answer the partner's questions, the student must find the correct information about each of the partner's sights on the info sheet.  Of course, all asking & answering MUST be done in Spanish!  While listening to their partner's answers, students record the information (numerically) in the following charts:

Partner A's chart to fill in

Partner B's chart to fill in

After both students have exchanged all the information about their sights, I have them pick two sights that they'd like to visit.  They have to work together to write about what the sight is and why it's important / why they'd want to visit it.  As in the Madrid activity, I run a self-scrolling PowerPoint with pictures of Sevilla on the big screen throughout the activity.  And just like that activity, students really respond to the realia and enjoy learning about the sights much more than if they were just exchanging made-up numbers and times to practice vocabulary by itself!

I love info-gap activities for so many reasons:

• students have a real reason to communicate
• they get to ask/answer questions they might actually ask & answer in real life
• having a specific task to complete keeps them on-task 
• designing the activity around vocab they are practicing keeps them in the target language
• they get to practice both speaking and listening at the same time!
• since it's a pair activity, students often correct/help each other with language usage

In fact, I love them so much that my students end up rolling their eyes when it's time to do another one... but the vast majority of students always list them under "What helped you LEARN the most?" in our end-of-unit surveys!  (Even students who don't list them under "What activities did you LIKE the most?" -- although many students include them there as well!)