Sentence Picture Relay

This is a great post-reading activity which I learned from my colleague Rachel Ash, who has her own write up about how to do it. There is a degree of work on the front end, but the actual activity is a great cooperative way for students to demonstrate comprehension of a known reading.

Pre-Activity Preparation

1. Take a story familiar to students, and divide it into 10-15 sentences.
2. Draw pictures for each of the sentences. It does not have to be anything elaborate. To quote the great Latin teacher Sally Davis, "everyone can draw stick figures." Example of my pictures. I created a table on a document to draw the pictures.
3. Type up the sentences. I created table on a document to type up the sentences. 
4. Make 10 copies (for a class of 30) of the pictures and sentences onto cardstock. You can use regular paper, but the cardstock makes the pictures/sentences sturdy.
5. Cut up the sentences and pictures - this is what will take up the most time in preparation. I had students cut these up for me.

In-Class Directions

1. Divide the class into groups of 3. There may be groups of 4, but that can be kind of big.
2. On a table/desk, mix all of the sentences together so that it is one big pile. On another table/desk, separately mix all of the pictures together so that it is one big pile.
3. Explain to students:

• Their job is to match sentences to pictures. There are ____ sentences/pictures pairs.
• As a relay, one team member at a time will grab 2 pictures, 2 sentences or 1 of each and bring them back to the team.
• The next team member will grab 2 pictures, 2 sentences or 1 of each and bring them back to the team and so on.
• As a team, members will try to match sentences with pictures, as more sentences and pictures are added.
• As more pictures and sentences are added, team members will need to determine specific sentences or pictures which need to be gathered.
• If a team receives a duplicate of a sentence or picture, then the team needs to send it back with their next "runner."
• Teams will have to match the sentences with the pictures AND to put the story in order.
• First team to complete the activity “wins”!

Observations

1. When explaining the activity to students, it does not make much sense, but once it begins and students begin to bring pictures/sentences to their teams, students understand how the activity works.
2. This can get VERY competitive depending on your students. 
3. I love hearing students communicate with their runners, "Bring back the picture with _________" or "We need the sentence that says _________," as they now need specific sentences/pictures to complete the activity.
4. The activity took about 10 minutes. I thought that it would take longer but because students were very familiar with the story in the target language, they did not think that the activity was difficult to do.
5. Remind students that part of the task is to put the story in order! Many get caught up in the matching that they forget this part.
6. Alternate version - I have done this activity where I broke up pictures and sentences into clauses, instead of full sentences so that students were focusing on specific parts of the sentence.