Speedwords! Vocabulary warm-up.
These PowerPoints are based on the New Horizons textbook for junior high school and I will add more as I make them. But you can use them as a template to make your own for other textbooks and levels.
The students read words in Japanese and note them down in English (must be spelled correctly and no checking the textbooks!). Each round is a little faster than the previous.
-Students in groups or individual (I usually do in groups though).
-Give them some scrap paper to make notes (or it works well in classes which require whiteboards for a later activity, then all the students can make notes on the whiteboard at the same time).
-I show them a demonstration where I write the words on the blackboard and deliberately spell a word or two wrong so that they understand that they have to spell them correctly.
-Then check the answers. 1 correct = 1 point. Students check their answers themselves.
There`s a couple of ways you can do this and I usually do a mixture. I usually do one or two rounds as above (I give them 10 seconds at the end to write more and check), then tally their score after each round. Then the last round I tell the students all to put their hands on their heads as they watch the words come up, so they have to remember the words as they come. Then give them 1 minute to write as many as they can remember afterwards.
I hope this is useful and your kids enjoy this activity! Nearly weekend ALTs! You can do it!
My students seem to like this game! Thanks! I use it with my 3rd years. I started off the way you describe, but my JTE started insisting on more time between rounds to talk in the groups and try to remember, so we do about a minute, then 2 minutes for the 3rd round since there's no note taking. After extending the time, the students scores actually went up really significantly, so that seemed satisfying for them, but the activity took 20 minutes! >.<
I am impressed that you did it with 3 graders. I have only used it for first graders at JHS as I thought the vocabulary shoots up in difficulty very quickly in the 2nd and 3rd grades and I wasn
t sure if this activity would be demotivating. Its good to hear that it went well even though it ran longer. Sometimes there is nothing you can do when a JTE wants it done a specific way... Thanks for writing!The vocabulary can be pretty daunting, I agree. What I did was I included some "freebies" so it wasn't all solid new vocab. I think it curbs the demotivation. Just some out of textbook words I think they probably know, or some katakana words to see if they trip up on spelling. Like is パーティー just pati?