How do we get students to make meaning in the target language?

The other day my students were playing Manzanas a Manzanas, the game I made where they practice describing nouns with adjectives. While they were playing the "it" student picked the adjective "guapo" for Justin Bieber and another student yelled "hot" and they all started laughing. I walked over to the game to start monitoring and made a comment like "en español por favor". They continued to play and the same thing happened. I kept saying "en español" and a student asked me "you get really mad when we speak in English, why?" and I responded by telling her that I knew she knew the words in Spanish so why switch the English and she shrugged.

A couple days later we were answering the question of the day "¿Qué hiciste ayer?". Students are supposed to discuss the answer in their groups and type an answer into goformative so we can see everyone's answers on the board and discuss them/correct them. I use the first few minutes of their discussion to take attendance and have private side conversations with students that were absent or need to make something up. I always listen in to their conversations while I do this. I heard some students say "what did you do yesterday?, well I went to the store so we can say "fui" and I started to feel that same frustration as before. Why were they translating? They knew all of those words in Spanish, I just wanted them to learn how to read the question in Spanish and answer in Spanish.

That's when I realized: they may know the words but the meaning isn't there. In the game they didn't think it was funny until they translated it to English. Even though they knew they meaning, they didn't feel it. Same with the questions. They have practiced that question and know the words but they couldn't find meaning.

This is my question, and I don't have the answer. How do we help them find the meaning??