Classroom Activity In Foreign Language

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Fly Swatter Game In my Spanish classes both in middle and high school, my teachers would play “The Fly Swatter Game”. We would be divided into two groups; my classes ranged in size, but never more than 25 students. If we had a bigger classroom, I’m sure we could have been split into three or four groups. The teacher would put about 20-30 different vocabulary words on the board pertaining to the chapter we were covering. For example, one chapter focused on grocery shopping. The teacher would separate the two groups evenly and each person in the group would be matched with an opponent. If there was an odd number of students, the last student was considered ‘score keeper’. Two students would be at the board at a time and would each have a ‘fly swatter’. The vocabulary words on the board would have Velcro attached to the and the fly swatter would have the opposite piece of Velcro in order for the word to stick to the fly swatter. The teacher would say “como se dice apple en Espanol?” (How do you say apple in Spanish) We would find ‘manzana’ on the board – ‘apple’ – and the first student to swat the word would then be asked to say the word out loud then in a sentence in Spanish. Each group member would have a turn going up to the board and competing with their opponent from the other team. You received a point if you correctly swatted the word and an additional point if you formed a proper sentence using the word. If you did not form a proper sentence, your opponent had the chance to ‘steal’ the point. I felt this game was very useful in learning the language. It not only helped learn the vocabulary, but also to use the vocabulary word to form sentences. It helped with grammar, pronunciation, and conversation. As the level of Spanish increased, the vocabulary and sentence structure also became more advanced. We would use this exercise to conjugate verbs and put them
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