Who doesn’t love interactive games as part of their Spanish lesson plans? Charades is an amazing party game, and you can bring that same level of excitement and engagement into your classroom while also reviewing vocabulary and grammar! It requires almost no prep and guarantees that laughter will ricochet down the hallway from your classroom!
Charades is a great game for providing repetition of vocabulary and sentence structure in Spanish. I start by teaching my students gestures for the pronouns. They start each turn by indicating the subject of the sentence with one of these pronoun gestures. Students already know that all sentences will follow the same format, so once they guess the subject, they automatically fill in the verb. Then the fun begins as the student tries to act out the rest of the sentence!
Suggestions of when to play charades
The great thing about this game is that it can be played at any level. Beginners can act out single vocabulary words, while advanced students can act out entire sentences.
For example: Did you just finish reading a novel with your students?
Great!
Use charades to review key elements of the plot!
Want to reinforce a grammar concept with extra comprehensible input? See the demo video below to learn how to play full sentence charades!
And if you’re stuck at home teaching over Zoom, what a fun, low-prep activity for students to express themselves! (Jump ahead to 2:59 in my video to see logistics of playing over Zoom)
Worried about a quiet or shy class?
If you’re thinking “my kids will never do that!” you may be surprised! Start off with you as the actor and let students guess! I guarantee that someone will ask for a turn after a couple rounds of watching you! Have fun!
