Behind your back

I am endeavouring this year to get more structured speaking activities and pair or group work into my Spanish lessons, in preparation for September 2014.  During the summer I went through all my (many) books to find new ideas.  Yesterday Year 3 and I were revising the numbers 1 to 15 with a view to moving on to saying your age.  I used this activity that I found in Juguemos Todos Juntos and slightly adapted.

In preparation I made some grids (above) with the numbers 1 to 15 on and laminated them.  The children worked in pairs, armed with a grid and a whiteboard marker between two.  One child chose one of the numbers, and then tapped their partner on the back that number of times.  Their partner had to count the taps, then point to the right number on the grid and say that number in Spanish.  If their partner agreed that they were correct, they wrote their initial on that square with the whiteboard marker.  You can see above the grid that Luke and Abbie were using.  Then they swapped over.  The aim of the game was to see who could get their initial on the most numbers.

This was the first time I had tried the activity.  I was very pleased with how engaged the children were, and when I stopped the activity quite a few pairs were on their second game.  I asked them for their feedback, and they said that they had enjoyed it and that it had helped them to remember the numbers better.  Some pairs had come up with their own twists and adaptations.  Two of the girls decided that they were going to tap each other on the head and not on the back.  Apparently that made it easier to count!  Other pairs decided that they would keep repeating the tapping till their partner got it right.

While Year 3 were working I thought of a way of using this activity for other topic areas and for other vocabulary.  For Places in Town, for example, with Year 6, you could prepare a grid with fifteen squares, numbered 1 to 15 in the corners, and with an image of a place in town in each square.  They select one of the squares and tap that number.  Their partner has to point to the right square and say the correct place in town.  I'm sure it could work for other things too.