Category: Brain Break Ideas

Describing People (Inside and Out)

I’ve been experimenting with different ways to engage our students in learning descriptive language, both for personalities and physical appearances, for Cycle 1 Phase 3 of the Stepping Stones Curricular Framework. This is the time we talk about being able to describe characters, which is in preparation for narrative storytelling. I wanted to share a few ideas with you (they aren’t new, but hopefully will spark a little interest), hoping they might be useful in your classroom:

Character Guess Who: Create a “Guess Who” game with characters from books, movies, or even historical figures. Students take turns asking yes/no questions about the characters’ physical features and personalities to guess who their opponent has in mind. It’s a fun way to reinforce vocabulary!

Storytelling with Mystery Characters: Tell very short stories that feature mystery characters. You can use existing people or just make it up. You could even use Chat GPT to help you generate the short stories! As you read the story aloud, give hints about their appearance and personality in context. Students can then draw or describe what they imagine the characters to be like based on the hints they’ve gathered. You can share the drawings under a document camera and ask the class to tell why/why not this drawing matches the story description.

Interview Celebrities: Have students imagine they are celebrity interviewers. They can prepare questions and conduct interviews with famous personalities. This activity encourages them to use descriptive language to paint a picture of the celebrity’s character and physical attributes. They can present these in small groups, to the class, or via video to you.

Descriptive Pictionary: Play a modified game of Pictionary where students draw characters based on your descriptions. For instance, you could describe a friendly, curly-haired, and adventurous person, and students have to draw what they envision. This game helps students connect words with visual representations.

I hope you find at least one of these ideas useful, and that they add some variety to class for a day! All of them are low/no prep, which is just the way I like it! 

Do you have more ideas for engaging students to describe people? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Happy teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!

It’s the Final Countdown!

This time of year, I can’t help but start to hear that song in my head as I pump myself up for the school day. I don’t know about YOUR class, but this time of year, they are starting to shut down.

Of course, I can’t blame them, because teachers are also distracted by all the end of the year grades and phone calls home and paperwork and meetings and planning and testing and…. well, you know what I mean!

So, how do we beat the overwhelming apathy? How do we keep them engaged in learning?

Gamify ANYTHING you can gamify!

1- The Unfair Game is a great, low-prep option. You can read more about that HERE.

2- You could play good, old-fashioned baseball with review questions. You will have to create the questions before starting the game, or simply use questions from previous exams if you are reviewing for a final exam. In this game, you simply draw a baseball diamond on the board and move the teams around the bases by answering questions that are of varying difficulty (single, double, triple or homerun). You can play with 2-4 teams. I have found that more than that seems to have many students not participating at any given time.

3- Of course, there are online options like Blooket, Gimkit, Quizizz and Kahoot. All of these are great options to keep students engaged.

4- This time of year, I appreciate crosswords for vocabulary review. It is an easy way to allow students to self-check their review AND keeps them off screens.

5- Trashketball is another fun variation of the baseball game. It involves a rolled up piece of paper with some duct tape over it and an empty bucket or trashcan. I usually have point lines on the floor with colored masking tape. A student or group (if you play in teams) has to get the answer to a question correctly in order to try to earn points for their team.

6- If you have a smaller class or even if you have chairs that don’t have attached desks, you can play musical chairs. You can place the chairs into several groups and allow them to play that way. Whomever ends sitting in the chair has to answer a question correctly or be eliminated.

7- JENGA is always a fun option too! You can get any Jenga set. There are small ones at most dollar stores and generic sets online. My favorite way to play this is with a life-sized Jenga that you can easily make by cutting 2×4 boards or buying the version you can play in your yard. For this one, each must be numbered. If the student places it on top without it falling, they have the chance to answer the question that corresponds to the numbers of questions you have prepared. They get points if they do both things. There are a number of variations for this game. First, you could have them play one class game in teams. Second, you could have two sets and have them play in groups with each set. Finally, you could have the small sets and allow partners or groups of 3 to play. Students are ALWAYS engaged in this one.

I hope some of these ideas help you find some way to engage students. Please comment with a game you use in your classroom. Maybe this way, we can all find something new to use this year!

Happy teaching!

Alana

Teaching Idioms to Increase Comprehension

Working with English Language Learners this year has really opened my eyes to just how much we use idiomatic expressions. They are EVERYWHERE! We use them in everyday conversations. We see them referenced in literature. We see them used in movies and tv and commercials. They are everywhere, and our students need to have a strong base in idiomatic expressions in order to be able to fully understand the language.

So, I started “an idiom a day” with my ESOL and bilingual classes. It has been really a great conversation starter! I am hearing lots of “oh, I heard that but I didn’t get it” and “oh, that makes sense now” from my students.

Here is a link to a free version with a few of them. Feel free to use them in your classes, use them to create your own or even adapt them to the language you teach!

I have used them to start class, given them to students to try to figure out on their own and used them as group work for students to discuss and come up with their best guess at the real meaning of the idiom! You could use all of the slides or even have students draw what the words say and then what it really means after a class discussion. This helps them really internalize the difference in the words alone and the expression as a whole.

You can also find Idiomatic Expressions in English Part 1, Part 2 and 3 (each with 15-20 idioms) on my TpT store!

Hope this makes incorporating idioms a little easier. Idiomatic Expressions 1 comes FREE as part of the Sra. K. Spanish Squads, and Part 2 and 3 will be included in November and December. You can go HERE and learn more about the squads and join today!

Happy Teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources! Become a Patron on Patreon!

First Week Ideas – This or That?

I am planning out some things to do in my classes these first few days back to get students engaged right out of the gate, let them see some things they have in common with their classmates AND help me get to know them!

So, one thing I thought would be fun would be an always popular debate…. Do you prefer THIS or THAT?

I know, seems silly, but kids really get into this one! It is a pretty heated debate. Now… how could you use it?

Well, in any class, you can just use it as a way to get the kids involved. In a World Language classroom, you could use it to review vocabulary or preferences and even write about one of the slides independently, in pairs or in groups. This could work with ELA classes as well for a speaking and writing activity. You could level up or level down as much as you need to make it a fun and even meaningful debate. You could use a Venn diagram or t-chart to take a look at what the students in each class prefer. You could do some basic graphing for math classes! The possibilities are endless!

I have a full version up in HERE my TpT store, but HERE is a quick PDF to get you started! You can certainly use these and then just add your own slides in.

Hope this inspires you to get students talking and writing on day ONE!

For even more resources, group coaching and more, head over HERE and learn more about the squads! Join today!

Happy Teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources! Be on the lookout for the announcement for my annual membership site in July 2022!

First Week Ideas – “The Great Debate”

I am planning out some things to do in my classes these first few days back to get students engaged right out of the gate, let them see some things they have in common with their classmates AND help me get to know them!

So, one thing I thought would be fun would be an always popular debate…. Is it a salad, a soup or a sandwich?

I know, seems silly, but kids really get into this one! It is a pretty heated debate. Now… how could you use it?

Well, in any class, you can just use it as a way to get the kids involved. In a World Language classroom, you could use it to review foods and even write about one of the foods independently, in pairs or in groups. This could work with ELA classes as well for a speaking and writing activity. You could level up or level down as much as you need to make it a fun and even meaningful debate. You could use a venn diagram or t-chart to settle the debate as well or have students write down their classification on a graphic organizer. The possibilities are endless!

I have a full version up in HERE my TpT store, but HERE is a quick PDF to get you started! You can certainly use these and then just add your own slides in.

Hope this inspires you to get students talking and writing on day ONE!

Happy Teaching!

Alana

Find me on Instagram (@SraKSpanish) , Facebook (sra k Spanish) and Follow my TpT store as I build more resources!