Charades in the Language Classroom

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use charades as a method for introducing or reviewing grammar or vocabulary.

I have memories of being a kid and peeking through the staircase and watching my parents and their friends play charades in the living room. I also remember thinking “I could’ve acted that movie title out better than Uncle Fred did!” Then, when I became a language teacher, charades became a class favorite improv game for reviewing or introducing grammar or vocabulary.

 What started at a parlor game in 16th century France has evolved into a fun, simple, but incredibly effective game to play in the language classroom. The basics of charades are:

  1. At least two teams competing against each other

  2. A person mimes (silently acts out) a prompt

  3. Their teammates must shout out the correct answer

  4. Within a set timed limit

  5. And fun is had!

 In my opinion, charades is best played with lists of vocabulary* or verbs. For example, in French students need to memorize the irregular past participles of verbs**, which can be quite boring. However, by doing past participle charades, students are incentivized to not only learn the correct past participle, but to make sure they know the meaning of its verb, since they’ll need to act it out or recognize it. (See below for adaptations of difficulty when using verbs).

 Preparation before class:

  • Find a place for this in your lesson plan. Maybe this is to review before an assessment? Or you are using the Drama Grammar method, and this is perfect for the ‘context exploration’ part of the lesson (in which case you’ll want to create some support materials to help students). Budget between 10-15 minutes, depending on how familiar students are with the game already.

  • Create a list of prompts (ex. specific verbs, irregular past participles, the unit vocab words in the target language, etc.) and print it out. Cut the prompts into individual small pieces of paper, then put in a container (i.e. envelope or Ziploc bag). Since I’ll often have five groups of six in a 30-person class, I tend to use five different colors of paper. That way if I find a random piece of paper when class is over, I know which bag to put it back into!

Before the activity:

  • Divide students into groups. As mentioned above, I like smaller groups of three competing with other groups of three. This way there’s two people guessing, which is small enough that students can’t just sit there. They also are guaranteed at least a couple of rounds of acting out the prompts.

  • Set the ground rules. Are participants allowed to put prompts back in the bag if it’s taking too long for their teammates to answer or they don’t know how to act it out? Are they allowed to have access to their notes when guessing and/or acting? If they violate the rules of charades (speak aloud or spell out a word) do they get any second chances or are they disqualified? If someone shouts out the correct answer right after the timer sounds, does it still count? I usually let each group decide for themselves.

During the activity:

  • The team with the most points wins the game. Points are gained when students on the person acting out the prompt’s team shout out the correct answer. There is a time limit (I usually do a minute, but that can be negotiated ahead of time) and the goal is to get through as many prompts as possible (gain as many points) during that time. The winner is declared when all prompts have been exhausted. As most students have access to phones with timers, I’ll have each group individually time themselves. This wikihow video explains how to play quite well.

  • While students are playing, I usually circulate to make sure everyone is on-task. If I see a student struggling, I might look at the paper and suggest a gesture or action for them to try. Because of the competitive nature of the game, there’s often a lot of engagement… and sometimes, too much noise!

After the activity:

  • I’ll sometimes follow up with a reinforcement activity, like a crossword** or a quickwrite, to solidify the learning in students’ minds. You can also have students do a quick reflection about how they did, and which words were the hardest to remember. Perhaps they could think of tricks of how to remember that word for next time? Students could also be asked to nominate an MVP of the group, whoever acted the best or guessed the most. Don’t forget to have students collect the prompts and put them all back into their container before you move on to another activity! There’s nothing worse that scrambling to deal with tiny scraps of paper between classes.  

Adaptations:

  • Do a round-robin style tournament where teams compete for the title of ultimate charades champion.

  • Do a whole-class version where either half the class guesses, or it’s a free for all (depending on the class, this could get raucous!)

  • Transition to a game of Pictionary after warming up with charades, or vice-versa.

  • Add in obstacles. For example, “for the next three words, you can only use your hands to act” or “you must stand on one foot for the next two words”. You could brainstorm a list of possible obstacles with the class, and pull one out of a hat every round. Or, you could throw them into the bag with the prompts, so when students pull out a suggestion, every once in a while, there’s a random obstacle added!

  • If playing with verbs in a target language with conjugations, you can start easy (have students guess the infinite) and then make it progressively more difficult. I do this by having a die that students roll. In French there are six conjugations for each verb, which makes it very easy! So, for example, if a student rolled a three at the beginning of their turn, all the guesses for that minute must be properly conjugated in the third-person singular form. If the conjugations are wrong (and you bet the opposite team will be monitoring!) then they can’t get the point until it’s conjugated correctly. You can even have multiple dice for more advanced classes: add in a die for different tenses!

  • If you need a fun game to play to fill time or as a reward, play charades like my parents did in their living room: have students write down famous movies/films/shows and guess the title in the target language

 

*In my interview with Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins they make the point that giving themed vocabulary lists is not evidence-based best practice. However, that doesn’t mean that you might not generate more meaningful vocabulary lists in other ways, such as through reading a class novel, music video presentations, or words that come up through a story if you do TPRS. You might also be in a situation where you are obligated to test students on certain vocabulary, and this is a way to make that rote memorization more engaging.

**French-specific resources (in PDF form):

Have you played charades with your classes? What kind of prompts do you use? Any tips or adaptations to share? Post below in the comments!

What is it? Improv Grammar Game

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the “What is it?” improv game to improve vocabulary and/or target grammatical structures.

 This is a similar game to another improv grammar game: “What are you doing?” but it involves props and less physicality from students.

Source: FreePik

Materials needed: a variety of regular items (or irregular if you have them) that are different in shape and size. I can usually find everything I need in my classroom for a quick round (such as a stapler, a scarf, a pencil, and a hat), but if you play this multiple times you might need to start bringing in some truly unusual stuff to keep the students on their toes!

This game was mentioned as an example of the “awareness raising phase” in Even’s (2004) Drama Grammar method, but it’s also a well-known warm-up game. The way it is played is that the class sits in a circle and an object is passed around while students ask each other “what is it?” and are given an answer by another student. The only wrong answers are to correctly identify the object or repeat what someone else has said. So, for example, if a scarf is being passed around, student B will ask student A “what is that?” and student A will say “this is my pet snake” and pass the scarf to student B. Then student C will ask student B “what is that?” and student B will respond “a magical flying carpet” and pass it to student C, etc. After students get comfortable with the game, you can introduce a more physical element by having them interact with the object (i.e. make the scarf wiggle and hiss for “a snake” or ride on it for “a magic flying carpet”). Change out the object once it’s gone around the circle or all options have been exhausted.

This activity can be used as a fun way to start off the class and/or have students dig deep for vocabulary. It can also be used for targeted grammar instruction. For example, how to differentiate between this/that, how to ask questions, or how to use the conditional when being polite (i.e., polite ways to retrieve the object from the previous person with phrases like “could you please pass that to me…?” or  “would you be so kind as to give me that…?”)

Adaptations:

  • When the student identifies the object, have the rest of the class repeat it back in chorus (i.e. Student A: “This is a snake”, the whole class: “That is a snake”).

  • Have multiple items going around at once so everyone stays engaged! Or break into smaller groups, each with their own object which they then pass on to the next group when they’ve done one or two rounds.

  • Allow students to use a dictionary or translator. Since they may be using unfamiliar vocabulary, the teacher or another student can write the new words on the board… and then use that new vocabulary as prompts for an improv free scene!

  • For more advanced learners, add layers of complexity to the answers, such as adjectives. Thus, it’s not just a snake, it’s “my pet snake” or “a small snake” or “a sneaky snake”.

  • For students that may be unsure, start with a whole-class brainstorm using a sample object. Students will see that they can transform the object into anything they want and there are no wrong answers. Alternatively, show students the object you will use and then give students a few minutes thinking and discussion time to decide what they will present it as (have them come up with at least one alternative in case someone takes their answer!)



How do you use this game in your classroom? Feel free to share in the comments!

Using improv in the language classroom: Defining Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to incorporate improv games and activities into your language classroom.

Drama is “a wide range of oral activities that have an element of creativity present” (Thorton & Wheeler, 1986, p. 317)

This is part III of a series of posts on using improv in the language classroom.

Just because a teacher uses “drama” in their language classroom does not necessarily mean that everyone is on the same page as to what that means, or the philosophies behind their choices. Dr. Kathleen McGovern, (author of the book on improv in the L2 classroom I can’t stop recommending) notes, for example, that a teacher that subscribes to the Audio Lingual Method, who believes that the repetition of scripts is integral to language learning, will have a different approach that a teacher who subscribes to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), who would forgo scripts for role plays and improvised games to enhance communicative competence. Moreover, a teacher who teaches using the Total Physical Response approach would have students embodying words and phrases, while Total Physical Response Storytelling (while similar in name, not similar in philosophy) would have teachers use comprehensible input and aspects of students’ lives while acting out a story. All of these are technically drama-based teaching, but all are very different! The only thing they have in common is the fact that drama is not the primary focus of L2 instruction, but as a tool to be used to enhance learning.

Therefore, Dr. McGovern, after synthesizing the literature that emerged in the field of drama and L2 instruction over several years in her 2017 article, suggested a system of classifications of common approaches that teachers can use when discussing drama:

Classification 1: Theatrical Performance

  • Definition: Students study and then perform a play in the target language.

  • Pros: Introduces students to the target language’s culture.

  • Cons: The plays chosen will often reinforce the norms of the dominant culture.

Classification 2: Process Drama

  • Definition: Involves improvised scenes, does not require an audience, and emphasizes learner reflection.

  • Pros: It has been shown to increase student engagement and participation, reduce anxiety, and result in multi-modal learning.

  • Cons: The benefits to students’ language learning is correlated to their teachers’ drama experience.

Classification 3: Games and Improvisation

  • Definition: Teachers use a wide repertoire of theatrical games and improvisation techniques.

  • Pros: While not specifically tied to a conceptual framework, this approach fits well within CLT’s goals.

  • Cons: Is a short-term method that relies solely on isolated exercises and is teacher orientated.

Drama is “the literature that walks and talks before our eyes” (Boulton, 1968, p. 3)

McGovern emphasizes that a difficulty in studying drama in L2 education is that drama is not static but constantly evolving. She suggests the following distinctions be made in order to limit confusion:

  • “Drama” v. “Theater”: Drama should be used to describe students engaging with theatrical activities, while theater should refer to students enacting a performance for an audience.

  • “Product-based” v. “Process-based”:  Product-based drama should be used to refer to an approach in which students study and rehearse a text that they then perform to an audience. In contrast, a process-based approach is one in which students participate in improvisation and theater games and is limited to the classroom.

  • “Small-scale” v. “Large-scale” forms: Small-scale forms should refer to activities that last only one class or unit and do not result in a final product. Thus, large-scale forms should refer to activities that are script-based and require more time.

Accordingly, in the spirit of Dr. McGovern’s desire to have clear definitions when talking about using drama in the L2 classroom, I want to clarify that when I talk about improv on this blog, I am talking about something that can be described as:

  1. Games and Improvisations. While Process Drama uses improv games, it is part of a much deeper philosophy of continuous, embodied learning that emphasizes learner identity. Games and Improvisation is the use of one-off activities that are incorporated into a teacher’s existing curriculum, and is not considered the curriculum itself. For more information on Process Drama I recommend Erika Piazzoli’s 2018 book “Embodying Language in Action: The Artistry of Process Drama in Second Language Education”.

  2. Drama. While sometimes my students perform for an audience of their classmates, that is not the goal of the activities we do.

  3. Process-based. There is no product. As Margaret Piccoli notes, one of the best parts of improv is that it forces us to be in the moment because it disappears as soon as it is complete!

  4. Small-scale. Any language teacher that takes on the task of staging a complete theatrical performance that takes months to rehearse, build, and promote gets all my admiration. However, that is the opposite of what I’m talking about!

While I was able to teach with no problems before coming across these classifications, I think there is a lot of value in being able to specify what we do.  For one, it allows us to reflect on the choices we make. For example, if I subscribe to CLT, and I have my students memorizing scripts, then there is clearly a conflict between my philosophical framework and the activities I use, and I need to make some changes. Furthermore, specificity gives us better understanding. If another teacher and I are both using “drama” in our French classes, we might have very different assumptions about what is happening in each others’ classrooms. Additionally, for research purposes, once everyone gets on the same page with definitions, it’ll make finding articles that are actually relevant that much easier!

Also, I think there is tremendous value in all areas being discussed! Galante (2011) notes that “while drama offers opportunities for learners to use prior knowledge of the L2 in a creative manner, theatre focuses on accuracy and aspects integral to the performance such as vocal projection and comprehensible speech” (p. 276). While my interests have leaned towards the process-orientated drama side of things, if I had a class that wanted to do a theatrical production, or needed to focus on accuracy, vocal projection, and comprehensible speech, I would love to do a big end-of-year presentation.

Source: McGovern, K. R. (2017). Conceptualizing drama in the second language classroom. Scenario (Cork), XI(1), 4-16.

Do you think definitions are helpful when discussing drama? How would you categorize your own use of drama in your language classroom? Share in the comments!

What are you doing? Improv Grammar Game

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the “What are you doing” improv game to reinforce present tense verb use. 

“What are you doing?” is a classic improv warm-up game. By that, it’s a game that’s designed to exercise your creativity, not be presented to an audience for laughs (though those usually occur!). More importantly, for our purposes, it’s a great exercise to practice the present tense of verbs!

 The way that the game works is that Person A starts miming an action, let’s say fishing. Person B walks up and asks, in the target language, “What are you doing?”. Person A responds by saying what they are doing using the present tense, but it can’t be the thing they are miming. So maybe Person A says “I’m playing hockey”. Then Person B begins miming playing hockey. Person C walks up, asking “What are you doing?”. Person B responds with anything but playing hockey, so maybe they say “I’m watching TV”. And so the game continues.

Stock image sites are great for brain-storming ideas for possible actions or for printing out pictures to help scaffold students into playing the game.

There are a few ways that this can be played. One is having a small group circle, and the person to the left always asks what the person to the right is doing. A more challenging variation is doing this in pairs, which keeps students on their toes, as they don’t have any time to preplan their answers. More advanced students might be able to do this game without any scaffolding, but novices might need a brainstorm of verbs, or even just conjugations, before playing.

This a great game for introducing students to improv, as typically there’s no audience and they only need to produce one sentence at a time. If you’re worried about students freezing up, the first time you play you can pass out slips of paper with either the sentence students should say or a picture of the action they should describe, so that they can get used to the format of the game (miming the action but saying something different). Then, in the second round, they need to generate their own verbs.

 You can also encourage students to go beyond the subject+verb structure, asking for further information. For example, maybe it’s subject+verb+adverb (or however your TL structures it) so that the student has to mime playing hockey excitedly, fishing unenthusiastically, or watching TV sadly. This can make for more challenging grammar, but also more fun for the students doing the miming! You can also encourage students to stick to themes, such as unit vocabulary or types of verbs (for example, only irregular verbs or reflexive verbs).

The beauty of the game is that there is an infinite number of responses (as many as there are verbs and qualifiers): the only wrong ones are if you describe what you’re currently doing or you assign an inappropriate action to your partner! Students can get really creative with both their answers (walking on the moon, feeding an elephant, eating a cake as big as me) and their mimes (I’m smiling just thinking about someone miming trying to eat a cake that’s the size of themselves!)

RESOURCE: Video describing how to play the game

RESOURCE: Video that goes into variations of the game and tips/tricks

RESOURCE: Florea (2011) breaks down this game into six easy-to-follow steps (presentation / practice / production / preparation / modeling / play) to add more scaffolding into playing this game, which you can read on pages 50-51 of her article.

 

Have you played this game before? Feel free to share any variations, lessons learned, or thoughts in the comments!