I Challenge You...

Sadly, a few would still fail!

I started this with my students this week and it has been interesting so far. I started off with getting rid of the usual "Bonjour, présent, hola, aquí" responses when I do the attendance and have asked my kids to respond with a word in the target language that is not any sort of greeting/goodbye word. I've been getting things like "rouge, le chien, l'ordinateur, Je me brosse les dents" mainly very basic words that a 2 year old could say, a few words/phrases from our units and the rest read from something on the wall. 

In an effort to make it somewhat more interesting for them and in the interest of building vocabulary, I have now stepped up the challenge and have asked them to take one or more things that interest them, be it skateboarding, video games, cats, whatever it is, and to use vocabulary related to that one thing or various things and respond to the roll call with that. Everyday has to be a brand new word and no word can be repeated in class twice. Additionally they are to keep a list of those words at the back of their binders just for the fun of it for now, but I would like to try to come up with an activity using it later on.

This has worked out very well in that, some would get restless during the roll call and start talking, now, they all have to pay attention because they don't want to repeat a word and they are interested to hear what the others are saying so they can catch them out repeating one. It has helped to settle them while they try to remember their word if they haven't written it down and it creates a nice and calm atmosphere to start the class.