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130 activities for the languages classroom by Clare Seccombe

Clare Seccombe, who runs the Lightbulb Languages website, has produced what looks to be a superb little resource for language teachers. Clare has been incredibly supportive of teachers over the years, sharing resources and ideas. She has worked in both the secondary and primary sectors and brings a wealth of experience and good sense to our field.

She is currently selling "130 Activities for the Languages Classroom" on Sellfy.

This is what she says:

"I have been sharing resources and blogging about them for many years now. These 130 activities are ones that I have either used in the classroom over the last 20+ years or blogged about at some point, or both!

A lot of the activities included cover more than one skill, so for ease of reference each one has a key which shows what it covers:

L - Listening
S - Speaking
R - Reading
W - Writing
V - Vocabulary
G - Grammar
P - Phonics
T - Translation

Most activities can be adapted to suit different age groups, ability levels and topic areas. There are activities which will suit students from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 5.

I hope you enjoy browsing through the activities, and that you find some that you didn’t know about, and even some that you did know but had forgotten!

So what do you get? A 38-page PDF book containing descriptions and examples of 130 different activities that can be used in language teaching."

Some of the activities are familiar, some you may not yet know. Beginners should find this particularly useful.

Here is an example of an activity in the booklet.

TRAPDOOR

It’s a pair activity which models good sentence structure, which will stand students in good stead when they come to write their own sentences later. here is Clare's explanation (and it's not that easy to explain!). First look at this mini-grid:


            un cinéma                                                 château
Il y a    un café                 mais il n'y a pas de      piscine
            un restaurant                                             patinoire


"Here’s how it works.  Each student in the pair has a copy of the grid.  Student A chooses one option from group of words, but doesn't tell Student B what they've chosen. Let's say for example that in the top sentence Student A chooses un café / une piscine / cinéma. Student B starts to read the first sentence, choosing one of the options each time as they do so.  "Il y a une église..."  Now Student B hasn't chosen the correct option from the first box, so Student A says "Trapdoor!".  Student B has to go back to the beginning and start the sentence again.  They repeat the process until Student B can say the whole sentence correctly according to Student A's choices.  Student A and Student B then swap roles and begin the activity again."

You can find this set of 130 activities here for just £2.50.

https://sellfy.com/ideaseducationltd




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