Smashdoodles

This is a great post-reading activity, and I feel like I have come totally late to the party on this one. A Smashdoodle is a way for students to interact with a reading, to demonstrate comprehension, and to summarize these interactions in various ways. It is called a Smashdoodle, because essentially, one is "smashing together" various components of a reading in one place to demonstrate comprehension, reflection, and/or higher order thinking. A Smashdoodle can be done digitally on a slide or on paper. Students can create a poster summarizing different parts of the text, fill out a foldable graphic organizer, or fill out boxes on a sheet of paper.

You can ask WHATEVER questions you want on a Smashdoodle, but the purpose is that the artifact is a holistic summary of the text. Possible questions to address - students can answer this as written sentences or as images (digital or drawn):

• Copy five sentences which best summarize the text.
• Who are the characters in this reading?
• Where is the location of the reading?
• Draw a picture which summarizes the reading
• Write down any words from the reading which are new to you
• Write down (parts of speech) from the reading.
• Reflection questions
• I learned that…
• I was surprised/shocked to learn that…
• I found it interesting that

Below is my first attempt at a Smashdoodle - it is very basic and on paper:

As I said, there are SO many different ways to do a Smashdoodle, and I feel that others explain it so much better than I do (and they have student examples to show). Below are some blog posts from where I learned how to do a Smashdoodle:

• Scott Benedict Smashdoodle write up
• Martina Bex Smashdoodle write up
• John Piazza Smashdoodle write up
• Elizabeth Detlinger Smashdoodle write up

For those of you who have done Smashdoodles, what do you like about them?

Draw-Your-Own-Picture BINGO

This is a listening activity which I recently learned this summer from Donna Tatum-Johns at the Fluency Matters Conference in Denver. She demonstrated this as a post-reading activity after she had facilitated a Clip Chat (formerly known as "Movie Talk"), and I thought, "What a great communicative way to play BINGO!" It involves students drawing visual representations of vocabulary words from a reading in a 3x3 grid and then reading sentences with a missing word in the target language from a reading which you have been reviewing. Students then have to look at their BINGO grid to see if they have the missing word.

Pre-activity directions

1. Pick 18 words from the reading which students can illustrate. Preferably pick words which you have been targeting and words which are drawable, i.e., do not pick an abstract word like "dignity"
2. Put those words in pairs so that there are nine pairs of words. Try to pair them in similarities.
3. Write a script where you will read each pair as "____________ or ___________." If you want, create slides where you present each pair as " ____________ or _________." 
4. Pick 10-12 sentences from the reading which have one of the 18 words and leave it blank, and write out those sentences. You will be reading them.

Activity directions

1. On a whiteboard or piece of paper, have students draw a 3x3 grid.
2. Tell students that you will say aloud two vocabulary words in the target language. They are to choose one of them and to draw that word anywhere on their grid. If you wish to have a visual of the pair choices, project the slide.
3. Give students one minute at the most to draw. Do not allow too much time, because there are nine words which they will draw.
4. When students are done, tell them that you will now read a sentence from the story but there is a word missing. If they have the visual representation of the word, then they may cross out the picture (but not cross it out enough that it cannot be identified any longer). Say that sentence many times to get in meaningful exposure of that sentence.
5. Continue on with the next sentence until a student gets three in a row.
6. When a student gets three in a row, that student yells BINGO. Have student come up so that you can check their board. Continue to play until you have 5 winners (or how many you want. I allow winners to continue playing and win multiple times). This will allow for continued exposure to sentences from the reading.

Observations

1. Wow, what a great new way to play vocabulary BINGO!
2. I love this way of playing BINGO with a reading, because it addresses so many modalities and components of language:
1. listening comprehension - students having to listen to the sentence to determine what word is missing and to look on their board to find it.
2. vocabulary - students need to know what target language words each of their drawings represent
3. personalization of words - students are drawing their own representations of the vocabulary words
4. communicative nature - the missing words are coming from the original sentences from the reading
5. higher order thinking - students need to make the connection between knowing what target word is missing and if they have that visual representation on their grid
6. student choice - students choose which words of the pair that they want to illustrate, in addition to where they want to place those words on their grid
3. This activity does take quite awhile to facilitate, because students are taking time to illustrate their choice of words and there are 18 possible word choices (in addition to the randomness of where they place 9 of those words) so even though it is a 3x3 grid, it can take some time before someone has BINGO.

Thanks, Donna, for this great activity!

Strip/Rip BINGO

This is a quick listening activity which I found out by accident a few months ago, and I do not know why I had not heard about this earlier! Not too long ago, in response to a tweet of mine about the "Sex Game," someone replied the following: "Hopefully you're not referencing Strip BINGO in the same sentence lol!" I was completely unaware of Strip/Rip BINGO, so of course, the name alone caught my interest - I just HAD learn about this activity. Much like the Sex Game, Strip/Rip BINGO is a lot more innocent than the name entails. Here are Martina Bex's write up and directions.

Variations

1. Target language word - have students write down the target language words, and read the story aloud to the class in the target language. When you get to a specific Strip/Rip BINGO word, pause, and have class chorally give the English meaning. If a student has that word on an edge of the strip, then that student can also rip it off the strip.
2. English meaning - have students write down the English meaning, and read the story aloud in the target language. When students hear the target language word aloud, they can rip off the English meaning if it is an edge word on their strips.

Observations

1. This activity lasted about 5 minutes and was a quick way to review a story in a different way.
2. I did the English meaning variation and loved that this was a new and different way to do a listening activity combined with BINGO! It was a close-listening activity.
3. I loved that this required me to read the story around 1.5 times - students heard repetitions of the story but with a goal of being able to rip off their strips in order to get BINGO!
4. After a student got BINGO, I actually had students ask me to keep reading the story so that they could get BINGO too! Of course, I did not refuse - this does not happen often at all! I am not a fool to refuse getting in more repetitions of language at their request!!
5. Now that students are familiar with the game and know "how" to game it (i.e., pick words which appear early in the story to put on the edges), future variations are to read a sight story, to start in the middle or end of the story, or to not use a story with a lot of repetitive vocabulary.

Listening/Matching Activity

Here is a good post-reading, listening activity for students to work on their listening comprehension skills. I believe that I learned this from Annabelle Williamson at IFLT this past summer (if it was someone else, I apologize!). It is a very basic picture matching activity, but it requires some pre-work on your end prior to facilitation.

Pre-Class

1. Take a known story which you have been reviewing in class. If it is a story which students have already heard narrated in the target language (as a Movie Talk or Story Listening), the better, because students are already familiar with having to comprehend it aurally.
2. Pick 10 sentences from the story. 
3. Randomize the sentences, and number them 1-10 on a document.
4. Create a 3x4 grid on a document, and letter each square in order A-L.
5. Illustrate the 10 sentences plus two more for a total of 12 sentence illustrations. Two pictures will not be chosen and will serve as distractors. Illustrate the sentences randomly. You can use screenshots if you wish.
6. Make copies of the picture grid for every student.

Class

1. Hand out copies of picture grid to every student.
2. Explain that you are going to read sentences from the story and that students are to pick which picture they think fits the description which they hear read aloud.
3. Students are to put the sentence number in the box of the picture which matches the sentence.
4. Read aloud each sentence to the class, and have students match the sentence number to the picture. Example: "Sentence #2 - the bear is eating hot wings." Repeat the sentence multiple times before moving onto the next one.
5. When done, re-read each sentence aloud with the correct picture letter. Example: "Sentence #1 - the old woman is chased out of the train station - is picture D."

Example:

Sentences

1. Parvus vir consilium capit! (The small man has an idea)
2. Parvus vir ad fontem ascendit ut vota expleat. (The small man climbs up to the fountain in order to grant the wishes)
3. Parvus vir conatur vota explere, sed non potest. (The small man tries to grant the wishes but is not able)
4. Vir in arcam nummum iacit. (The man throws a coin into the box)
5. Eheu - nummi adhaesiti sunt! (Oh no - the coins have become stuck!)
6. Parvus vir votum explet, et subito, vir pecuniam habet. (The small man grants the wish, and suddenly the man has money).
7. Vir in fontem nummum iacit, quod votum est pecunia. The man throws a coin into the fountain, because his wish is money)
8. Parvus vir in fontem nummum iacit. (The small man throws a coin into the fountain).
9. Iuvenis in fontem nummum iacit, quod votum est amor. (The young man throws a coin into the fountain, because his wish is love)
10. Parvus vir votum explet, et subito, iuvenis et femina amorem accipiunt. (The small man grants the wish, and suddenly, the young man and woman receive love).

Observations

1. Wow, what a great listening activity! So easy to facilitate after the prepwork!
2. This is a great way to deliver Comprehensible Input, because students are receiving repetitions of understandable messages in the target language.
3. This involves higher-order thinking in students, because it requires them to understand what they are hearing and to match it with a visual picture.
4. Even though students may only need to hear the sentence stated 1-2 times to complete the activity, they are receiving subconscious repetitions of the sentences when you say them 4-5 times.
5. Because the brain craves novelty (thanks for that phrase, Carol Gaab!), this is another way to review a story in a different way without being repetitive. 
6. I have a love/hate relationship with using screenshots. On the one hand, I love that they are available just a cut/paste away, but at the same time, there are issues, such as ambiguity sometimes in what the screenshot is communicating, difficulty in seeing the picture when printing them for black/white copies due to contrast issues, etc.
7. Because I myself learned Latin without any type of oral/aural components, I am always amazed that students are able to do this. Whenever I comment on this to students, they always reply, "It really is not that hard." To which I reply, "But that is because you are so accustomed to hearing Latin spoken to you."

Crossword Puzzle Train Relay

Here is another great post-reading, collaborative activity which I found on Cindy Hitz's blog. It involves crossword puzzles and is completed/competed in a relay kind of way. This activity involves a story which you have been reviewing with students and needs to be one which students know well in the target language. 

Here are directions for the activity from Cindy's blog.

Example of one which I did with students - this is based on a Movie Talk called The Wishgranter.

1) Crossword Puzzle

2) Crossword Puzzle Clues

Observations

1. This activity took about 12-15 minutes, as the opening rounds lasted about 30 seconds each, with the rounds lasting around 45 seconds by the end, since more time was needed due to less clues available. 
2. Because this is essentially a cloze sentence activity, students need to know the reading very well in the target language, since they are filling in the blank with the correct word.
3. Because this is a crossword puzzle, correct spelling is important. If students needed help with correct spelling, they could ask me. I would not tell them the correct answer for a clue but only the correct spelling of a word.
4. Students whose turn it was to take a break during each round enjoyed it! 
5. I allowed students who only had the clues to write in the answer to one of the clues listed on their sheets in order to give them something to do. 
6. Students enjoyed the "choice" aspect and that they could choose any clue to answer (at least in the beginning rounds).
7.  I did not think that this activity would become competitive among students, but I had some students really get into it.

As always, thanks, Cindy for your great ideas!

Three Sentence True/False

Here is a great no-prep, post-reading activity which I got from Cindy Hitz's blog - if you are not reading her blog, it is a treasure trove of great CI insights and activities! I have been devouring it and have found so many practical CI application there. 

The activity is very simple - two true sentences and one false sentence from a reading. Here is a link to her directions for this activity.

Observations

1. This truly is a no-prep activity - the only material which you need is a passage/reading which you have been reviewing.
2. I gave 45 seconds for each group to find the false sentence. This gave students a sense of urgency (which was not necessary since most found the false sentence in about 20 seconds) but also kept the activity moving along.
3. I divided the reading into three sections - students had to pick one sentence from each section. I did this so that students had to use the entire passage instead of just writing down the first three sentences of the passage. This also made students look through/be familiar with the entire passage in determining the false sentence.
4. Although I partnered students, I had a few smaller classes which would have resulted in lesser rotations of sentences and would have made the activity end much more quickly. To remedy this, I myself added 3-4 lists of true/false sentences and lettered them. For these classes, I kept the lists of sentences, and one group would pass its sentences to me, and in turn, I would pass one of mine to the next group. It is important, however, that you keep track of the order of your own sentences so you know which sentences to pass on next.
5. Due to having an odd number of students in a few of my classes, I did have groups of three. I found that this was too big - pair works better if possible.
6. This does get in lots of repetitions of sentences. As students got more exposure to the true/false sentences, it became very obvious to them which sentences were false.
7. I liked that this activity involved close reading, because many students wrote some subtle changes for their false sentences. 
8. I loved that all I had to do was facilitate this activity. This gave me an opportunity to walk around to see how students were doing.

So if you need a break from "being on" in the classroom or suddenly are in need of an activity at the last minute, consider this one! As always, thanks, Cindy!