One-up! Games to Promote Speaking any time of the year
Gamification of activities in class to facilitate student engagement is one of my favorite tools in my teacher toolbox. Today, I played a great game for novice high and above students in any world language class. We are preparing for our midterm exam, of which 25% of their grade is speaking. In order to promote speaking with more details, compound sentences, using adjectives, and just generally speaking in a more complex way, we played "One-up." The idea for the game is based on those annoying people in your life that always one-up you.
To start, students are given a set of image prompts. Before class I prepared a series of images that students could use as prompts. We started with this great image of the beach (see below). You could also just start with a theme, or list of themes. Images are great for scaffolding and help students have a more memorable experience. In groups of two, students were instructed to start with a really simple sentence in the target language.
For example:
-I swim.
Then their partner has to one-up their sentence, adding to their partners statement:
-I swim a lot.
Then back to the first person:
-I swim a lot at the beach
And back to the second person:
-I swim a lot at the beach with my friends.
So on and so forth until one student can't continue to add to the sentence, and says "I can't one-up you!"
The student that makes that last one-upped statement earns a point. They move to the next image. If you are using the card set with this game, the students would have to add statements based on the cards that they have in their hands; with, without, sometimes, never, moreover, also, etc. Whoever started first during the previous round, should be second this round to be fair. Play the best out of 5 to see who is the best one-upper! This is a great way to get students speaking in class. I definitely model the game the first time I introduce it and teach students some fun target language phrases to keep the game going. I have had students go back and forth for well over 10 minutes on one single prompt! Here are some phrases I keep posted during the game.
In my Spanish class, I use:
"Yo Más " - One-up
"A ti te toca" -your turn
"No puedo adicionar más uno." -I can't one-up you (I can't add another)
"Gané" - I won
"Un tanto para mí" - A point for me
This is a really great way to push students to elaborate their thoughts, while having fun! On the way to proficiency! If you want to try but want to give students more structure, try using this Yo más card set we made, that helps students out but giving them a series of words to try to use in their Yo más statements. There is a subjunctive extension pack, too!
