7 Tested Spanish Activities and Strategies to Increase Student Engagement

In this blog post, I share activities and strategies that have worked well in my French and Spanish classes to increase student engagement, and therefore, to increase proficiency in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. After all, increased student engagement means increased student achievement. I also provide links to some free resources.

I was listening to my professor husband talk about his frustration with the lack of student engagement in his COLLEGE class. (THAT’S discouraging, right?) The conversation reminded me of my years as a new teacher. I would stand up in front of the class and yammer, yammer away. That worked well for the motivated students, but not with the I’m-only-taking-this-class-to-get-into-college” crowd and the I-don’t-do-homework kids. They were not engaging.

The last thing world language teachers want is for students to sit passively while we teach. Unless we purposely plan activities with high student engagement, passivity will be the default. Students need to interact with the language to become proficient. So, how do we get students to participate? Below are some strategies and fun activities that worked so well, they became part of my permanent lessons.


7 Tested Spanish Activities and Strategies to Increase Student Engagement

1. INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT DURING ORAL PRESENTATIONS WITH LISTENING ACTIVITIES

ORAL PRESENTATIONS OPTION 1

Oral presentations are a necessary evil in the world language classroom. Students need to practice presentational speaking at all levels from beginning to AP Spanish or French. The challenges are 1. Finding time in class for the presentations and still covering the material, and 2. Engaging the students who are either sitting passively or mentally reviewing their own speeches.

Either way, they are not learning. The solution is to give students a grid to fill in while they listen, and grade not only the target language speaking skills but also the listening skills. For example, when I teach descriptive adjectives, my high school students must present themselves to the class, saying their name, age, date of birth, adjectives that describe their personality, what they like to do, and what classes they are taking.

Click on the following link or the image below to download the activity: Spanish Descriptive Adjectives Presentation


Here is what it looks like:

I love this activity because ALL students are engaged, it provides comprehensible input (repetition in context ad nauseam) and it’s easy to grade. My T.A. just checks it for completion. If you don’t have an assistant, just quickly glance to see if any blocks are missing. (If you would like quality assistants, click the following link to get my T.A. recruitment letter.)

I give a point for each completed line. Make sure to tell students the listening activity is worth points and the more lines they fill out the more points they get. They will need to keep the grid in their binders until all students have presented.

ORAL PRESENTATIONS OPTION 2

Student-created quiz: When my upper-level students give oral presentations, they create their own quizzes, which they hand out to their classmates before they give their speeches. Since students know the quiz will be graded, they read the questions and listen intently while the presenter talks. After the presentation, students turn in the quiz or trade papers in class. If they hand in the papers, my T.A. or I correct them. If they exchange papers, the students grade each other’s quizzes.

COMPETITIONS

When I was a novice Spanish teacher, my lesson plans included activities that engaged a few students at a time. For example, I would write a sentence on the board and one or two students would come to the board to answer or revise it. Big mistake! I learned that if an activity, particularly a closing activity, doesn’t engage ALL students, it will not be effective because most students will either listen passively or disengage completely.

Most of my activities involve the entire class. Many are simple competitions in which I divide the class into two teams, numbering each side from 1-15 or so, depending on the class size. Then, I say the sentence or question (listening practice), pause (the pause is super important because every student thinks he/she will be called upon), call a number, and the students to whom that number is assigned must answer orally or in writing on their whiteboard (speaking and writing practice). This works especially well with a furniture arrangement that has a walkway dividing two sets of desks.

2. INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT WHEN SHOWING VIDEOS

One of my favorite ways to provide CI is to show level-appropriate speaking or music videos; they are so effective for second-language acquisition. But there is passive viewing and active viewing. Why would you want to increase student participation during a video or movie? After all, they’re getting comprehensible input and therefore acquiring the language, right?

I can think of a few reasons:

  • They may think the activity is optional and sit passively or sneak surreptitious glances at their phones (unless all phones are safely in their pouches). See my phone pockets HERE.
  • They may be watching, but they won’t be paying close attention. That’s why every activity I assign has an element of accountability. All my Spanish videos have comprehension and/or interactive activities.
  • They will not retain as much if they are not interacting with the language.

Below are several ways to get students to interact with videos in Spanish or French.

  • Create or find a listening activity on EdPuzzle. EdPuzzle stops the video intermittently to ask students questions.
  • Show a video that has questions already embedded into it, like this video for the Spanish House and Furniture.
  • Give students questions about the video before you show it, so they will be focused and looking for the answers.
  • Tell students they will act out their own version of the video after you show it. (I love doing this with commercials and students come up with the most creative and entertaining versions.)
  • When showing a YouTube music video, have students fill out a Cloze activity while listening. Click on the following link to get the Cloze activity for the song Me voy by Julieta Venegas: ME VOY You can use this activity to practice the reflexive (me voy) or the preterite.

3. INCREASE STUDENT PARTICIPATION WITH THE EIGHT STATIONS ACTIVITY

In order to produce, students must practice speaking. This activity keeps students speaking French or Spanish the entire period and the students themselves are asking the questions. When your principal says he/she is coming to observe you and he/she wants to see student-centered activities, impress him/her with this activity. And the best part? Students love doing it and beg to do it again. I have 8-Stations activities for both Spanish and French that I use for culminating end-of-the-year practice and review for the present tense, preterite tense (passé composé), future tense and the Spanish subjunctive.

4. INCREASE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT DURING READING

There are many pre and post-reading activities to help students interact with and understand the text. For example:

  • Circle the verbs. When teaching the preterite and imperfect (passé compose et l’imparfait), students read a story or article and circle one past tense in one color and the other in another color.
  • Add your own ending. Tell students you are going to read, tell, or act out a story and afterward, in pairs, they must write their own, or another ending. In order to write the ending, they must pay close attention to the events in the story.
  • Read the story to the students. Before reading it, tell them they will be changing the story. Leave out words, expressions, verbs, nouns, or any part you like. Students must replace the removed parts of speech or vocabulary with new words.
  • As students read along with you, whenever they encounter a certain word or verb, they must shout it out. For example, when teaching the preterite vs the imperfect, stop each time you read a verb and have students shout “pretérito,” or “imperfecto”.

5. INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS AND GOOGLE DRIVE ACTIVITIES

I resisted Interactive Notebooks for a year, chalking them up to the new pedagogical fad. Until I realized how great they were. I use many PowerPoints in my instruction, and even if I teach in small chunks, (15 minutes of direct teaching, 10 minutes of checking for understanding, 30 for practice) I don’t want students sitting passively while I kill myself doing my song and dance. At the beginning of class, I hand out the Interactive Notebook Activity, foldable, or flipbook, and while I am presenting, students are filling in their interactive notebooks. We’re ALL working and engaged. Woo hoo! Click on the following link to find out how I set up my master interactive notebook: Interactive Notebooks in the World Language Classroom

A good way to get the entire class engaged is to assign Google Drive Activities. Whenever I include Google Drive Activities in the lesson, all I have to do is walk around while the entire class is tap, tap, tapping away.

6. PROXIMITY

Proximity is one of the best ways to keep students engaged. It works 80% of the time. I rarely teach cemented to one spot unless I MUST face the class to demonstrate a concept, handle manipulatives, or act out a story with the students. Any other time, I walk around as I am teaching, positioning myself as close as possible to the students. Fred Jones calls this, “working the crowd” in his Tools for Teaching session on classroom management.

Notice I didn’t say it works 100% of the time. Everyone has those classes in which no matter where you stand, there are four other fires breaking out in other areas of the classroom. You can only be in one place at one time. I am not Super Teacher, although I played one in high school during a rally. (See picture below.)

7. INCLUDE A PARTICIPATION GRADE WHEN ASSIGNING GROUP ACTIVITIES AND PROJECTS

A great way to get students engaged is to assign group work or projects, but what do you do about that one kid who doesn’t contribute? Make 25% of the grade participation. Of course, you will give the students a rubric to use as a reference sheet so they know exactly what skills they will be graded on. In addition to the commonly-graded skills of language use, pronunciation, and comprehension, add participation to the rubric. The teacher doesn’t assign the grade; the team members do it (anonymously to avoid bad feelings or repercussions). After students turn in or present the project, they give each member of their group a participation grade. That grade will be added to the total score for each person. Once I implemented this system, students were more apt to pull their weight, and if they didn’t, their grades reflected that.

Spanish resources that promote student collaboration and participation are digital escape rooms. And the best part: students love them so you’ll get high student engagement. They include all the adolescent favorites: videos, songs, puzzles, and digital activities. They’re self self-correcting too! No work for you!

To recap: Get all students involved with activities and strategies during oral presentations, PowerPoint presentations, closure activities, group projects, Group Speaking Activities, reading, and proximity.

I hope some of these ideas are helpful for increasing student participation in your French or Spanish language classroom.

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