Search Results for “toolsforeducators” – ¡Vámonos!
 

Search result for: toolsforeducators

Dados

| 2 Comments

It’s very tempting when you can’t go shopping to get the shopping bought to you. I’m being quite restrained but I have been ordering a few things…

One of my recent purchases is pictured below.

photo 1

I admit that they’re bigger than I’d envisaged (they’re advertised as and are 1.5 inches/3.8cm but my spatial awareness is not good!)  and some of them aren’t exactly cubes, but they serve the purpose for which they are intended. Which was?

Well, they’re made of foam which will hopefully mean less noise, and their size and colour means that I’ll see where they are, they won’t get mixed up with the school dice and they won’t get lost under/inside books/pencil pots/pencil cases.

And I have several ideas for their use.

Playing board games

Well, obviously! You can make your own using Tools for Educators (see previous post), a template like the ones below or have a look at this site – I particularly like the daisy one!

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 09.54.54

 

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

Counting/Maths 

So many ways to use dice in this way! Here are a few – I’m sure you’ve got ideas of your own – feel free to add them in the comments!

  • throw one die and say the number
  • throw one die and double it, or multiply by 3 etc
  • throw two dice and add the numbers
  • throw two dice and multiply the numbers
  • throw a dice several times, adding up the numbers are you throw and trying to score a perfect 21.

Here’s a PDF of Maths activities using dice for Kindergarten right up to year 8. Dice-Ideas

I particularly like Make 100/Cien challenges learners to throw dice and make 100 by using any  operation, and also Double half or stay (I shall call it Doblar, dividir por dos o ¡ya! as I am struggling to find a better way of putting it!) which is simlar to 21 but can be played with any number and you can, as the name suggests, double,half or stick with your number.

Counting/Maths games

Activity Village suggests a very simple game called Mountain o Sube la montaña which has the aim of reaching the summit of the mountain first by throwing the numbers in order. So you have to throw 1 to start then 2 and so on. Players say their numbers as they throw the dice so plenty of repetition. Have a look at the site  for more detailed rules and variations.

Here are  the downloadable mats to play the game Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 10.33.15

 

For subtraction, here’s a game I found on eHow.com called Pennies (although could be called cents or Euros instead of peniques 😉 )

This is an ideal game for younger players. Stack 20 pennies in the center of the table. The first player rolls one die and takes the number of pennies shown. Play passes to the next person and continues until the pile is gone. An exact roll is required to take the last of the pennies. The winner is the person with the most pennies.

Language used would be very simple – Tengo 2.  Hay 20 euros.  Tomo 2. Restan 18.

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.57.59

I like this idea from Activity Village too  called Beat That! (¡Superárlo! or ¡Superar eso!) that reinforces place order and practices 2 , 3 (or more!) digit numbers.

Roll the dice and put them in order to make the highest number possible. If you roll a 4 and an 6, for example, your best answer would be 64. Using 3 dice, a roll of 3, 5 and 2 should give you 532, and so on. Write down your answer, pass the dice, and challenge the next player to “Beat That!”

Play in rounds and assign a winner to each round.

You can also play to see who can get the lowest score!

Mathswire has several games that look at probability – I especially like the Cookies game where you throw two dice and add the numbers to decide which cookie can be packed away – or perhaps eaten! 😉

Download the  Great Cookie Contest Cookie Sheet Mat

A variation on this I’ve played is for outdoor fun using chalk as I shared at #ililc3

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.01.20You draw a grid in chalk on the ground with lanes of 10 squares for numbers 2-12 (when I saw it played with Kindy in Switzerland they used 1 which wasn’t fair!!) Pupils choose a lane and they are the ‘caballo’ or ‘caracol’ that will race in that lane. They take it in turns to throw two dice and add the numbers together. That decides who can move forward; so if 2 and 3 are thrown, caballo #5 can take a step forwards. The idea is to “llegar a la meta” first. Lots of number language involved, and it’s an activity
that can easily be played as one activity in a carousel. (There’s a board game called Snail Pace Race that is similar but uses colours)

 

Another probability activity from Maths is fun would be a great way of supporting the Maths curriculum using más probable and menos probable.  Clare Seccombe has done a whole presentation on Supporting Maths through language learning – it’s well worth a look for further ideas! (Sadly now that Slideshare has stopped slide casts the audio is no longer embedded 🙁 )

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

Grammar

Six sided dice are great for conjugating verbs as there are six “persons” 1st 2nd and 3rd singular and plural. Throw the dice to decide the person of the verb

1=yo

2=tú

3=él/ella/usted

4=nosótros

5=vosótros

6=ellos/ellas/ustedes

You could combine this with a board game featuring verbs like the one I made below for M and M, my Spanish English students in Switzerland to practice the past tense. Or

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 10.05.30

 

You could also assign parts of speech a number – learners throw the die a number of times and “collect” parts of speech according to their roll and then make a sentence using that combination of words. You could restrict the choice of vocabulary with cards, or allow learners to use dictionaries to make a unique sentence!

1=noun

2=verb

3=adjective

4 = adverb

5=connective

6=free choice

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

Speaking

Similar to grammar games, you could play a speaking game as suggested here

The teacher brings a large soft dice to the classroom. Students sit in a circle and take turns rolling the dice. Each time, a student throws the dice. The student who rolls the dice uses the number that shows up on the die to say some things about himself or herself. For example, if the number 2 shows up, the student will have to say two things about himself or herself.

Another variation would be for the student to ask the class the number of questions according to what number shows up on the dice. Equally, you can make the class ask the number of questions according to the number on the dice.

You could also use two dice and challenge learners to make a sentence with that many words, a phrase with that many syllables or think of a word with that many letters. circle_time_picci

 

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

Beetle 

Throw the die to win body parts. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a beetle you build; it could be a monster, a clown, a person or something completely different. Activity Village suggests Mouse  or Ratón

6 = el cuerpo
5 = la nariz
4 = bigotes
3 = un ojo
2 – una oreja
1 = la cola

Art

Here’s an idea to make a Joan Miró style painting using a die…

roll a miro

 

…and why not have a look at one of these ideas to make a Monster,  a Picasso painting  or a Miró Skyscape.

In fact, you could make anything with components using a dice… or randomise anything in sets of 6 using dice!

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

Dressing up

Assign a number to items of clothing with the aim of creating an outfit for a teddy bear, cut out person, or even your partner. You could end up with far too many jumpers and no trousers!

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 12.18.04Directions

You could use dice to decide directions that people should take. You could use the classroom, a map or an assault course!

In it’s simplest form you could just use left and right

a la izquierda – impar (1,3,5)

a la derecha – par (2,4,6)

or you could add todo recto by assigning opposite numbers to each e.g. 1 and 6 = todo recto; 2 and 5 = a la izquierda; 3 and 4 = a la derecha

or even have a different direction for each number, including ‘darse la vuelta’, volver al principio or reaching your destination if you throw a 6.

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 11.59.47

And there are so many more things that you  can do!

Here are some links I’ve found that might be of interest.

Juegos de dados games to play with up to 5 dice

Cómo jugar al juego de dados de los diez mil or Reglas para juego de dados 10000

Juego mueve dados online dice game – not really for using my dice, nor a language activity but I thought I’d share as it made my head ache!

 

And then, of course, there are dice that don’t have numbers on them but colours, images or words!  MES Dice games has some ideas that uses vocabulary dice too, and Crazy faces  looks fun too – I might come back to that and write another post on non-number dice! And then there are dice apps…

Plus I love this game!

 

I’ve spent today at University of Leicester talking to Primary PGCE students about using technology as part of a yearly event organised by Doug Dickinson aka @orunner. I took part in the original one and have missed the last two as I was in Switzerland so it was good to be invited back this year for the fourth year.

photo

(Thanks to Oliver Quinlan for the very ‘serious’ photo!)

Below is my presentation and below that, some links to sites and apps I referenced.

4 Pictures 1 Word free app
PicCombo free app
Ruzzle free app

Padlet
Popplet – also app lite (free)  and paid (£2.99)

Festisite
Tools for Educators

Storybird
BookCreator – app (free to try) and paid (£2.99)
PicCollage  app (free)
PicLit

Tellagami – app (free)
Morfo – app (free)
Voki

Any questions, please feel free to leave comments below or message me via Twitter @lisibo

Screen Shot 2012-04-23 at 21.20.01At the ICT Links into Languages Conference aka #ILILC3 Show and Tell, amongst the fun and hilarity over Manx knobs and whether Swiss or Belgian chocolate is better, we did do some ‘serious’ sharing of ideas for language teaching. Others shared how to adapt and play Cluedo, Jenga, Blankety Blank ( I even featured in a question!) and Poker in a language classroom context.

My contribution was to share how to make games and other resources using Tools for Educators.

I’ve shared here previously about some ideas for using them so have a look at Tools for educators – board game maker and Los oficios job activities. You can also have a look at What did you do? game and What did you do yesterday? game, two resources for English teaching that I shared on The Language Point.

And here’s a bonus set of bingo cards for Easter that I’ve just made! Easter bingo

Perhaps if you make some games or resources, you could share them with others. There are a variety of places that you could share, but why not think of sharing with MFL Sunderland, a site run voluntarily by Clare Seccombe which is chockablock with great ideas, most of which have been made by Clare!  She’s launched a 70 Day Challenge to celebrate the 9th birthday of MFLSunderland – could you help her reach the 70 new resources target?

 

I had a bit of time today as my youngest was ill so decided to make some simple resources to go with my previous post about Nubeluz and their song Quiero ser…

I used Tools for educators, a great online worksheet/puzzle/resource maker about which I have previously written.

So, here you have –

vocabulary sheet    jobs vocabulary

a labelling worksheet   job labelling

a set of bingo cards (10 different cards in total)  Jobs bingo

a boardgame 

A very versatile site which is really useful to a pretty average drawer like me! And resources such as the board game and the bongo cards can be used for multiple languages so could be used in literacy as well as Spanosh/French/German etc.

My one issue is that there is a distinct lack of women in the library of job images!

You can make wordsearches which are fun but not my favourite activity in the classroom as well as crosswords and mazes. ANd there’s a new ‘guest tool’ which I will be investigating called Comic Strip Maker that allows you to make dialogues between the Anime style people on the pages.

Whilst reviewing resources on The TES resources website, I came across some that referenced Tools for Educators – Board Game maker  so I thought I’d investigate.

As is often the case, this site is not a language specific but it allows you to input your own language elements.

 

Whilst reviewing resources onThe TES resources website, I came across some that referenced Tools for Educators – Board Game maker  so I thought I’d investigate.

As is often the case, this site is not a language specific but it allows you to input your own language elements.

From a bank of images, you can choose to make a board game on a wide variety of subjects, using just images as in the fruit example, or incorporating instructions as in the mini beasts. These examples use the Galactic Challenge theme but there are three others from which to choose (it defaults to Galactic Challenge but all you need to do is go to the bottom of the list of topics and click on the board you’d like) The third and fourth examples show other board games.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These games can be printed and laminated for future use, then used for a variety of exercises.

For example, take the fruit one. It could be used for-

a)vocabulary rehearsal – everytime a learner lands on a fruit, they say the name of it in Spanish

b)giving opinions – learners give their opinion of the fruit on which they land

c)asking questions – learners ask one another if they like the fruit

d)shopping – learners must travel the board buying fruit – perhaps give them a list of fruit and they must keep going until they have all their fruit?

e)pronouns – ask and answer ¿Hay uvas? and response could be Sí las hay or No no las hay

f)colours/adjectival endings – learners say what colour the fruit is eg La manzana es verde or Hay una manzana verde; Los plátanos son amarillos / Hay plátanos amarillos

And that’s off the top of my head. I’m sure with a bit more thought I could come up with more ideas. If you have any, post them in the comments!

There are also Printable board games so that learners can design their own games. what about using the Loveheart game board for likes and dislikes – or for Valentine’s Day? The question cards can be edited to include your own images or questions. Or perhaps use the Bubbles theme for wishes or wants!

SaveSave

¡Vámonos! ©2024. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Theme by Phoenix Web Solutions