Is it…Guessing Game

This last summer I spent some time with my six year old cousin. He has some speech issues and sees a speech therapist weekly and is not, in general, a great talker…yet. However he loves playing the Guess Who game. Do you know this game? You have cards with images on them that you slide into a game apparatus and then you choose one of the images and then you ask your opponent yes or no questions to try to figure out which one they selected.

I was in love with the language that this little guy was producing and hearing. “Does it have sprinkles on top?” “Is it cold?” And less anyone think this game is just about language, there is also a clear strategy, as I learned after I lost the fourth straight game in a row. Carson is a Guess Who game master ninja.

My students can do that. I can make that.

So I did.

I’ve made a slide deck with three different games. I had a fourth of people, but I realized that all of the people were, uh, well, all the same, uh, color. And while it represented me, it didn’t represent my students, so I deleted that one. I’ll try to make a better one.

It’s simple, share with students and then they drag the circle onto the image they select and the x’s onto the ones that are eliminated from the questions they ask. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Click on the image to go to the slide deck to make your own copy.

Bingo with Classroom Objects

Who doesn’t love a good game of Bingo?

I created an interactive slide deck for Bingo with the classroom objects.

NB: In the textbook a bicycle and car are listed in the classroom objects section. Who am I to judge? There’s also an mp3 player and a CD player. I just make fun of those. I also purposely chose the old cell phone image because that’s what’s in the book and we laugh about that.

NBB: On Wednesday, my college class created this list of supplies needed for French class and then math class. Look at the first thing they said for math class.

Xanax! I almost fell over laughing. They said math class is really stressful, so it’s helpful.

I digress.

My bingo game is meant for student to drag nine objects of their choice onto the grid and then I will describe the object. So for pencil I might say, “You guys think it is necessary for math class, but it’s not Xanax and it’s not a calculator.” Then they’ll place a yellow dot on the object if they have it. If they get Bingo they’ll tell me what they had. Then they can choose nine new objects and play all over again. If we have time they’ll play in groups and take turns being the one to call out the objects by describing them. There won’t be time for this. This is the type of thing there is never time for in college class. (The memory game is in French, but if you watch the workflow below you’ll see how to change it to your language!)

In the slide deck is also two version of Memory. Let’s not kid ourselves that memory produces extraordinary language or is anything other than well, a memory game, but it’s fun sometimes. It could be a finish early activity. Students move the box on top of the grid to find the matches.

Click on the image to make a copy of the Bingo.

I’m always asked how to edit the master slide and make these types of activities so I made a workflow in case it’s helpful for you.

Quickly Make a Quizlet Diagram

Work smarter not harder

Quizlet has a feature that they call “diagram.” It’s pretty darn cool. You upload a photo and then place dots on it and student identify the dots. The implications for language learners to practice identifying vocabulary are clear. Here I am using it not so much as a “diagram,” but as practice for vocabulary for a story. But I am also going to use my diagram for a speaking activity and possibly some Bingo because who doesn’t love a game of Bingo?

I’ve got enough stuff to do besides giving myself more work, so here’s a “hack” you can use to make it go faster.

For this hack, I’m assuming that you are also teaching this vocabulary somewhere and that this likely involves a slide deck or Powerpoint. I like when I can reuse something multiple times in multiple ways because it feels like time well spent making whatever I needed to make. Did you know you can download individual slides as a jpg? That you can then load into Quizlet saving you hours of time? You can!

Make a slide

We’re going to import lots of images using the Explore tool and I like everything nice and neat so I first made a table. The pictures won’t actually go in the table, but it will keep them nice and neat. Choose the number of rows and columns.

Use the Explore Tool

If you are not already using the Explore Tool in Google Slides to find your images you are doing too much work. Click on Tools>Explore Tool and search for what you need. Click on “Images” to get a wonderful selection. The search button isn’t like regular Google search so if you want a cartoon search something like: writing cartoon, or writing png. That will help narrow it down to cartoons. Click the plus sign to insert into your slide. Repeat.

Bonus: My slide is actually a speaking activity to be done with partners. I’ll show you what I did in my workflow.

Download Your Slide and Upload to Quizlet

You need a file for your Quizlet, so click on File>Download and choose .jpg. Then upload that to Quizlet and add your dots et voilà, you’ve quickly made a diagram out of another activity. #multitasking

Last week I published a workflow of my slides and it seemed well received. (Nobody threw virtual tomatoes, anyways.) So here’s another which shows how I also made this into a speaking activity.

Link to the Interactive Slide itself.

Verb Battleship: Reflexive Verbs

I was looking for a fun activity with reflexive verbs this week and I settled on some verb battleship. (Because who doesn’t love a great game of battleship!) We didn’t even have enough time to play, but that’s ok, I’ll keep it on deck for when we do. (On deck! Get it?! On the deck of a ship!?)

It’s been a long week.

Click on the image to go to verb battleship. You’ll be asked to make a copy.

Yelp Template

Write a Review

I made a French Yelp template for Google Slides for an assessment last week. It has a place for students to write two reviews. I wanted to design a prompt that would have students using the past tense and wouldn’t you know it-that’s what you do in a Yelp Review! Quelle coïncidence!! (Yelp.fr even made it easy by asking “Êtes-vous venu ici?” and “Vous êtes allé dans ces commerces?” Merci Yelp! It also fit in nicely with our class discussion of why French people come to visit our desert area.)

If this weren’t going to be a formal assessment, I would make it a collaborative slide by duplicating a whole bunch of slides, sharing it as “students can edit”and then asking students write a review and then to respond to a another student’s review. There are stars off to the side to drag in to make it more “official.” It’s also in 8.5 x 11″ format in case I wanted to (gasp!) print. Share in Google Classroom as “make a copy for each student.”

Click on the link or image to view the template.

Yelp Template

Adding Video in Google Slides

Google announced a new feature and I am ecstatic. You now can add videos directly from your Google Drive! They don’t have to be on YouTube!!! (If you’re on a school Google account, this feature may not be available just yet depending on how your administrator has set up for rolling out new features. Just give it a week or two. You’ll know because when you click on Insert>Video there will be a choice that says Google Drive.)

This means we can add listening or speaking activities to our Google Slides via videos!!

Create a video using a device. This might be easiest on a phone, but you can use any device. (I did the example on my phone. I covered up the camera, but you can also just point to a nice picture.)
Upload this to your Google Drive. (You’ll need the Google Drive app on your phone.) Make sure you set the permissions to anyone with the link can view – not sure if this will automatically fix itself if you share in Google Classroom, but why take a chance.
Create your slide and insert it.

Why?

Why would we want to do this? Endless awesome reasons.

Differentiation- Give students different slightly different directions or a slightly different task. Give a baseline version and a challenge version. Example for clothes- have a #authres of some clothes choices. In different videos ask them what they would wear to a party, to the beach, for a wedding. Or describe what someone has chosen to wear to one of those places and ask the students if it was an appropriate choice and to explain. Or give them a different amount to spend and have them say what they would buy. They can write their answers or discuss.
Choice- Students love choices for tasks.
Working with a story? Put some images and then tell different stories and have students move the images around to match what you’re saying. Or change the story slightly and have them react.
I can’t stop thinking of ways this can be used!

In this example I added a video to a third slide of my prepositions Interactive Slides.

Open Mind Interactive Slides

I’ve been working on a presentation on reading strategies and updated my “Open Mind” Template for Google Slides. An “Open Mind” activity is pretty simple. Students insert words or images into the mind of a character or person they’ve been reading about. (For example for Romeo Montague a student could put a heart and say that Romeo is in love.) This works particularly well for language learners because they can insert an image and then talk about why they chose that image. Since it’s a Google slide, you could also have students do it collaboratively- two working on it at the same time or even put several in a slide deck and ask students to fill in for different characters and then students could guess which character was which or explain to each other why they think those particular images were chosen. Students can justify their answer in the speaker notes portion of the slides.

I’ve included two templates in the slide deck. One is a basic open mind and the second is a “says, does, and thinks” where students separate out what the character says, does and thinks. I also like this one for language learners because it gives them practice using structures like “he thinks that…” “she says that…” If you were working on the subjunctive you could also use for wants and wishes. So much fun!

Click on the photos to make a copy of the Open Mind Template.

Thinks, says, does Open Mind — Thinks, Says, Does Open Mind

Fake Facebook Interactive Slide

I’m working on a workshop on reading strategies and thought I’d share my “Facebook” Google Slides page. It’s in French. Since I’m not on Facebook, I did a web search for what the French terms were. It’s two “pages” and the yellow boxes were meant to be where the students fill in.

How can you use this? The ideas are limitless! I use it for an assessment to talk about themselves and their friends. If you’re reading a book or watching a movie you can have the students fill in for a character and his/her friends. Imagine Gatsby’s Facebook page!

Fake Facebook page using Google Slides (You’ll be prompted to make a copy.)

"Facebook" Google slide

"Facebook" page

Collaborative Magnetic Poetry (French) – Interactive Slide

Collaborative Magnetic Poetry I made a collaborative slide activity for creating sentences. Students drag the cards onto the slide to create different sentences. It’s a round about way to talk about grammar. Once the students get all done- the different colored cards can help facilitate a discussion about grammar. What do you notice about all of the red cards? The green? The yellow? I didn’t have a chance to test this out with my students – though I’ve done this many times with actual cards. The benefit of the technology is more for the teacher in that you can change the cards easily and not have to spend all day at the copier and paper cutter.

Students all edit the same Slide deck so at the end you can cycle through all of their creations easily.

The subjects are all rather crazy- based on a story I tell at the beginning of the year. Plus, the more “interesting” the cards are the more creative students get with their sentences. They can tell a story or just write sentences. This version doesn’t have any connecting words; just subjects, verbs and some prepositional phrases for the most part and so it’s meant for some pretty early Novices. The “cards” are mostly off the slide so that there’s plenty of room to make sentences.

Collaborative Magnetic Poetry Interactive Slide

Verb Battleship

I’ve played verb battleship for years and it was always a bit of a frustrating experience because it always took at least 20 minutes to set up the boards and explain how it worked. I can’t even say why I kept doing it, except I guess I liked all the practice it gave using the négatif and I was willing to sacrifice the time I spent explaining it in English.

This is an interactive slide version (based on a math version from Alice Keeler) that works way better than paper. Like waaay better. Click on the link to view. There are directions on the first slide and be sure to share as “make a copy” in Google Classroom.

You’ll be asked to make a copy and then you can change the verbs to whatever you want!

Verb battleship

Verb Battleship – Click to make a copy.