A Twist on the Worksheet

I love watching my students create with the Spanish language.  However, I also have to balance that open-ended time with being able to translate specific sentences focused on certain grammar concepts especially on their major exams: the midterm and the final.  With our midterm next week we are reviewing how to conjugate ser and tener as well as adjective agreement.

In previous years we have had worksheets that we do in class.  Students work individually or in pairs/trios and then we either write the answers on the board or I send students around the room to look at the answers on other sheets (get a little bit of movement going!).

Today I tried a variation on the idea of the worksheet.  After using our warm up to quickly review the two verbs and rules of adjective agreement, students numbered lined paper from one to twenty-eight, skipping a line between each number.  Then each student picked up a card from one of the stools in the front of the room.  The card had an English sentence on one side, Spanish answer on the back.  They wrote the answer on their paper and flipped the card over to check.  If right, they drew a star on the paper.  If there was an error, they crossed out the wrong word and re-wrote it correctly on the line below.  Then they scooted back up to the front of the room to trade out cards.

The cards varied in difficulty which was also a benefit.  I liked that the students did not stay sitting for very long (today is only our third full day of school since Christmas due to the weather so we're still adjusting to being back!).  I realize that the time it took to get up, get a card, and sit back down might be considered wasted time but I preferred allowing students to work at their own pace and that they stayed active; my second period was much more involved than when we have done "normal" translations.

In the future I might put two sentences per card just to cut down on the walking if I feel that too much time is spent moving around.  Or I could put kids in stations with a pile in the middle and kids trade their cards with the pile and then after 8-10 minutes, they move stations.  We'll see :)

This did require more prep than just writing a worksheet but I definitely think the benefit to the student learning outweighed my time spent writing the cards at home.