Matamoscasitas

I first learned about the flyswatter game when I was an elementary education major in college.  Once I moved into my own classroom, I would write out the words on an overhead transparency, project the words onto the board, and after giving strict instructions on what the flyswatters were allowed to hit, hand over one flyswatter to each team.

The students overall really enjoyed trying to be the first one to hit the vocabulary word.  However, I never felt that this activity involved enough students.  I tried making all students write down the answer after each round, repeat the word after me, be allowed to give directions to guide the student with the flyswatter.  I still felt as though it was too easy for students to not be actively involved since only two kids out of possibly thirty were at the board at a time.

My new classroom only had a SmartBoard, no projector.  No way did I feel comfortable letting high school students hit that piece of technology hard!  And so, the Matamoscas (Flyswatter) Game went into storage.

This week I decided that I wanted to take a chance on the Matamoscas Game again but instead of breaking the class up into two teams, I would put the students in pairs and give each group its own board and a mini-flyswatter (matamoscasitas) to each student.  I made the mini-flyswatters by cutting rounded paper shapes and gluing them to the end of fat popsicle sticks.  (My bored study hall kids helped me with the construction :)

I gave very strict instructions on how to act with the mini-flyswatters to my Spanish III students.  Then we started the game which was grammar based instead of vocabulary (they had to hit the correct irregular yo form after I read a sentence in Spanish that used a different form of the verb).  Whenever a student won, he or she initialed next to the word.  At the end I had one tie-breaker question for pairs that had equal scores.

I was really happy with how the students behaved; I did not see one flyswatter attack!  Plus, none of the flyswatters broke which had been another worry of mine.  The kids all seemed engaged, solving my earlier concerns with the Flyswatter Game.  It does take a little bit more prep work this way but I believe the trade-off is worth it.  I can use this idea for a variety of vocabulary and grammar topics across all four levels which is great.

Maybe one year I will make the Matamoscasitas papers different colors.  What do you think?