Re: Drills for Controlled Practice in CK and CL

"Run To Spots and Say" in two key steps

Teti taught me this one, and it works great. I've made some variations on it. The teacher places the cards all over the floor of the classroom.

Step 1) Teacher chooses two kids. Teacher then acts like he is whispering to the rest of the students, saying the vocabulary. The students chorally shout it out, commanding the 2 standing students to find the card, run to it, and say the word on the card.

Step 2) Make the students into teachers (a great trick for many activities in class). Choose three students to run to the card, and one other student to act as a teacher. The new student-teacher says the word, the three standing students run to the card and say it.
*Be sure to incorporate all students into the activity. It can be easy to favor strong students by allowing only them to be a teachers, but do not fall into this trap. Choose all students to act as teachers, and stand by struggling students to guide them, if they can't say the words clearly and independently on their own.

"Run to Duplicates" in Two Key Steps

I invented this game as a variation on the "Run to Spots" game. It works great in my classes.
Preparation: Make 1 copy of each card, creating a duplicate of each one. You'll have 2 of all cards

Step 1) Lay out all of the cards in a straight, horizontal row along the front of the room. Then, make 2 spots (approximately 20 inches apart) in front of the row of desks. Two students will stand next to each other, facing the whiteboard, approximately 6 – 10 feet away from the row of cards. The teacher selects two students.

Step 2) Lead the students to chorally repeat words on the cards. The two selected students race to the card that they hear, but they cannot go to the same card. They stand next to the card, say the word, and then run back to their spot (the spot you’ve drawn that designates the starting point).

It might be easier to imagine this game audibly and physically. 80% of the kids shout out vocabulary, 2 kids run to the spot and say the word, and then race back to their spot. In other words, all kids shout, two kids run and say and run back, then all kids shout, two kids run and say and run back, etc.

Variation: Turn the students into teachers. They enjoy leading this game and are eager to participate.

*Similar to “Run to Spots” game, be sure to incorporate all students into the activity. Also, monitor and guide the game, making sure that the kids are speaking the language when they arrive at the card. The game is really fun, so sometimes they forget to say it because they’re happy to have found the card and ran back to the starting point before the other student. My technique is the following: I say their names, like “Belinda,” and make a gesture toward my mouth, which prompts them to say it.

“Frolic Around The Red Circle”

Place vocabulary cards in a circular pattern on the floor. Play a song, and ask the TA to stop it about every 10 - 20 seconds. When the music stops, everyone freezes in front of the card, then says the vocabulary on it. The teacher guides the speaking by pointing to the students or saying the student’s names. The kids learn this game quickly, and often the teacher can simply name the first student. Then the kids will say the vocabulary in front of them automatically and independently.

Variations: Do silly dance moves as you are frolicking around the circle. Throw things at the kids as they are frolicking around the circle (safe things, obviously, like rubber ducks or other soft things). Roll up a book and tap students on the head with it. Respond positively to silly stuff they do, too. From what I’ve observed, kids revel in the freedom to be silly in class. They are happy. And when they are happy, they will follow the teacher’s lead in any language activity.

“Stopwatch Race”

Place 4 – 6 cards on a table. Using a stopwatch, have the kids race to say all of the vocabulary words on the table.

*Remind the students that the purpose of the game is to say the words clearly AND say the words quickly. (They are disqualified if they mumble the words frantically in order to be faster than others). Also, I have seen 2 students get sad because they are slower than other kids, so the way to manage the game fairly is to both record the times on the board and award points for clear speaking. This depends on the personalities in the class. Some groups won’t care about the times; they just think it’s fun to say the words fast. Other groups might have few really competitive kids in class who might overemphasize speed. If the group is especially competitive, reward struggling students with extra points for clear speaking. All in all, this game can last about 5-7 minutes.

“Throw-and-All-Say Musical Chairs”

Write or project all vocabulary on the board in a large grid. Divide the vocabulary in different quadrants of the grid, putting about 2 or 3 separate words (or phrases) in each section of it. For example, one quadrant will have “eat breakfast” and “drink milk” in it, and an adjacent quadrant will have “eat dinner” and “make rice” in it.
Line up chairs in a row, leaving plenty of room for the students to walk around them. The students are not allowed to touch the chairs.

Play a song, let the students rotate around the chairs, and then stop the music. The students scramble to sit in the chairs. The remaining student who is standing has to throw a sticky ball at the grid on the board. The teacher then leads all students to say the words in the quadrant where the ball’s hit.

Continue to repeat until one student wins. Throughout the entire game, all students practice the language.

This game is very fun for the kids. You can play it two times before moving onto the next activity in your lesson plan.

Fun variation: Secretly give the standing student a tennis ball. It ricochets of the wall and the kids have to dodge it. It’s hilarious.

“Throw the Hammer for Points”

Divide the class into two teams. “Boys Versus Girls” works well. Mixed gender teams work well, too.

Lay the cards on the floor and make a big circle or oval around all the cards. Then make lines that separate the cards in different sections (approximately 2 – 3 cards per section). Now you have a big circular floor grid with a bunch of vocabulary cards inside it. At this time, begin to add smaller ovals inside the grid and add points to them. Elicit the point values from the students, such as 100, 1000, 9000, etc, and add these point values to the smaller ovals (these smaller ovals give the students something to aim for). The students enjoy shouting out points. It gives them the power to co-create the game with the teacher.
Set up a small chair approximately 4 feet from the grid, and let 1 student throw the hammer to the grid. The hammer lands on the grid. The teacher kneels next to the grid, lifts up the cards, and leads all students to say the words in that section (you can also point to the cards if you have trouble kneeling). Finally, the teacher or TA can award points according to where the hammer lands.

Fun Variation: Instead of adding points to the grid, put the names of 2 students in each quadrant. Wherever the soft hammer lands, the thrower gets to hit those students 3 times with the soft hammer. They laugh a lot during this game.

*In team games, make sure to choose students alternately from each team. Otherwise, the points won’t be fair and the students will get mad. It’s happened to me!

I'll talk more about this style of game in a different section of this staff forum. For now I'll just describe the "Cars for Points" game.

"Cars for Points"

Preparation: Buy cheap wind-up cars from Auchon or Carrefour. They wind-up when you pull them back, then a spring in the car activates the wheels and they zip across the floor when the students let them go. I found a package of 12 of them for about 40 kuai. I've used them in many classes.

How to Play: Draw a big grid on the floor. Fill the grid with ovals and squares of different point values. Elicit point values from the kids for the different sections of the grid (i.e. 100, 500, 1000, 9000, etc). Then, make another line on the floor about 3 feet from the grid. Students say a sentence, a group of words, or a dialogue, and then they can choose a car, wind it up on the floor, and aim it toward the grid for points.

Most of the time the cars land on the grid. Sometimes they veer to the right and left to random places. The students love playing with the cars and watching their classmates play with them. They always laugh as the little cars zoom all over the room.

"Throw the Dice at Stuff For Points" ~great for CL classes and higher levels, too~

Preparations: 1. Bring little plastic figurines (toy soldiers, toy people, toy animals, etc) to class. 2. Divide the class into teams, or assign points individually.

The set-up: The teacher stands three figurines in a row on the top edge of the whiteboard. The teacher stands one toy cow and one toy dog on either side of the three figurines. No there are 5 toys balancing on the top edge of the whiteboard. Then, the teacher makes small arrows from each of toys and assigns point values to each one (50, 100, 200, etc.) I usually make the toy soldiers 100 points each and the dog and the cow 150 points each. Then, the teacher makes a line approximately 4 feet from the figurines.

How to Play: The teacher leads the kids in Controlled Practice speaking or a Free Practice speaking dialogue. Then, the students can throw a big soft thing (a big dice, a soft hammer, a balled-up jacket, etc) at the figurines. Whatever they can knock down, they can win points for. For example, the student steps up to the line, throws the dice, and knocks down 2 toy soldiers and one toy cow. The student's team is awarded 350 points.

This game is fun and hilarious for a couple reasons. 1. It's fun because the general set-up of the game is playful. The kids are sitting there looking at a row of toy soldiers and toy animals, which they are about to try to kill with a projectile. It's funny just looking at it! 2. The goal of the game is to knock the figures down, which is a fun challenge for most kids. They are eager to try it. 3. Unexpected, hilarious things happen during the game. A figurine falls to the floor and his arm breaks off. It goes flying across the room. (kids bust out laughing) A figurine breaks clean in half when it hits the ground. (more laughter) Then the teacher can use both halves of it and assign points for each half. 4. Sometimes the toys don't fall down, but instead, a toy cow will be dangling from the top of the whiteboard by 1 leg that's still hooked to it. So funny!

"Old CD's Frisbee" and "Trick-the-Teacher Prepositions Nuttiness" coming soon.