Increasing student engagement without over engaging my free time

This year I try to keep students engaged without spending hours planning a fun activity that may or may not work out. I thought of the easiest review game ever after I was forced not to do my modified version of the fly swatter game when the poster machine broke one morning. It took me all of two minutes to think of the game and ten minutes to get the supporting materials together.

Modified Fly Swatter Game

I let students pick a partner. Each pair gets an answer board with scrambled phrases in the target language. I call out a number and translation of one of the phrases on their answer board. Students work with their partner to write the correct number beside the phrase on their answer board. The group that gets the most correct wins a prize. 

Why is this review game awesome?

1. Students are engaged

2. Students are quiet (they don’t want neighboring groups to steal their answers)

3. Students are practicing listening

4. I can easily assess listening comprehension

"Is we doin' work today?"

I never knew kids could be so lazy until I started teaching. Last year when I taught a state tested subject, I kind of understood why they complained about doing so much work. This year I teach an elective; Spanish 1. Just to be clear, this is Spanish for kids who have NEVER taken a foreign language class in their lives.

This means we're learning things like the ABCs, days of the week, numbers, weather, classes, and colors. You are officially the laziest person on earth if you think learning the ABCs in Spanish is too much work. We even watched a video and sang a song!