One Resource, Four Ways
There is nothing I hate more than spending time creating something and the activity lasts 5 minutes. Nope, not about that life. Today I’m showing you how I take one resource and use it four different ways.
The Resource
It’s a simple looking activity. This is one of my sentence games (Check out all of them here). Traditionally it is used as a guessing game of sorts to practice specific grammar skills like conjugation, word order, adjective matching, etc. I have several version but this one focuses on estar and prepositions
#1 Small Group Game
I put students into groups of 3. Student 1 comes up with a sentence in their head (sometimes they write it down to control for shenanigans) while the other two take turns guessing. Student 1 circles correct info and crosses out wrong guesses but ONLY after the guesser has said what the sentence means in English. It’s amazing how competitive this simple game can get! I also have groups that are super chill about it and just have fun. That’s great! For this game, sentences don’t always have to make sense. That weird twist can get interesting.
Extension Idea 1: Students write and illustrate their guesses. Turn it in for formative work.
Extension Idea 2: Students write their guesses down but make them a fill in the blank for the verb conjugation or adjective matching. Students can enter them on a shared Google doc and now you’ve got a bank of practice question to copy and paste for warm-ups or a practice quiz.
#2 Whole Class
You can do the same procedure above but as a whole class. You, the teacher, can create a sentence or take turns having students create the sentences. I project the gameboard and students can cross out the answer on an interactive white board (I once had my projector shine on to my regular white board and it was glorious for writing). I work at a 1:1 school so my students usually pull the game up on their devices and airplay through Apple TV to my projector. This works great as a filler activity too.
Need a present tense reference sheet?
#3 Individually
If novice students need extra scaffolding to create full sentences, these game boards are golden! I love to have students write a sentence and then draw to show their understanding of the words. They don’t have to stop at the scaffold either.
#4 Bring Them Out Again!
To practice adding details or forming compound sentences for novice students, bring out old game boards! They are awesome to use when learning new skills because they give students a sense of confidence because they are familiar with the boards and vocab, and again, hello scaffolding!
Another option is to use the boards but in a different tense! Practicing the imperfect or preterite? Bust out an old present tense game and have students use a different tense! No need to reinvent the wheel!
Want To Save Time & Energy?
Check out my ready-made sentence games here!
Bonus: Easily Use On Paper or Digital
I love these activities because I can use them in a paper version (I put them in page protectors and use dry erase markers) OR digital. I pop them into Google Slides or have students annotate the PDF. Another option is to pop them in GoFormative in a Show Your Work question for students to easily draw on! You can get Google Slide versions of my games here.
