Jugar jueves...arguably the best day of the week

September 29, 2022

It's up in the air for the kids...do they like música martes, merienda miércoles or jugar jueves the best? Probably depends on the week. But jugar jueves has a special place in my heart. Tons of input, tons of output, collaboration and lots of laughs. Plus, class flies by, and I find it incredibly easy to trick the kids into learning. I had already played Heads-up, Quizziz, Checkers and a Blooket this week, so I needed something different. On deck for us today was:

Quick brainstorm: but it was a competition, so also a "game". I gave them the concept and they had to come up with the most words within their group, competing against the rest of the class. Right now we're discussing the Andean worldview, so they all had to be words related to values and perspectives associated. It was the perfect formative assessment as I walked around observing who was contributing, the words that they added, how the explained to one another what the words they were proposing meant. Then, I gave double points to certain words (see bold words below) and "blocked" basic words like "Peru"...they had to be perspectives or values.

Quizlet Live: Words to definitions in Spanish to highlight concepts of our theme. "Worldview" isn't an easy concept, so this was fantastic to be sure that they all understood nuances like reciprocidad, complimentariedad and el buen vivir.

Webquest with a Kahoot: MAJOR tricking students into learning here...I started the clock and gave them 5 minutes to search a website (aka READ!) and collaborate to find answers to a graphic organizer. Then, I threw the Kahoot up on the projector and voila -- it's ANOTHER game!

Next up, Jenga: This reviewed concepts of our theme and took it a step further with a cultural comparison section. Jenga is great, because with 54 blocks, you can cover a WHOLE lot of review. I love to have a definitions section, a true-false section, and some questions, but that cultural comparison question made them really THINK...perfect prep for a formal CC next week!

Finally, we played one round of Tabú, one of my favorite circumlocution games. Round one a practice round of all of the meriendas we've had this year, so just for fun, but the rest of the rounds will be great tomorrow instead of a formal warm up so that they start class positively, but also review the prior days' concepts.

The best part? We put all of those great games in your units (and MANY more) with full instructions, so you don't have to create it yourself! Yay! Also...la cosmovisión andina mini-unit coming soon!