Monday, January 26, 2015

Activities for Language Club

If you are a sponsor for your school's Language Club or Culture Club, or are thinking about starting a Spanish Club, French Club, German Club we'd like to offer some fun activities that you can do with your students. 


Since our language and culture club has students studying a variety of different languages, we have really enjoyed taking a more global approach. We have an account with www.postcrossing.com and we send postcards and receive them from all over the world in many different languages. We have a showcase where we display all of our postcards on a huge map and next year we are creating a traveling postcard display that will travel to the different elementary school buildings in our district. We have all learned a lot from these small glimpses into the lives of people all around our wonderful world.
-Spanish Sundries

The World Language Café  offers the following idea:
Temas y tapas/Chez Nous: Here's an activity that I do with my classes and can be done with an after school group. Create your own language café. Have students sign up for dates throughout the year when they will bring an authentic food and/or drink with cups, plates, utensils, etc. to share. Students can look up recipes online. If
you will be eating in the classroom, make sure that the food and ingredients are peanut-free.
Have students sit around tables in the cafeteria or classroom to converse. Start off by having the students who prepared the food talk about what they made, which country it’s from, how they made it, what ingredients they used, etc. Then start the conversation topics. Tailor the topics to what you are studying or to what is going on at school, in their lives, around town, etc. Prepare 5-8 conversation starters.

Sample Conversations:
1. Talk about where the students will go to college, what their lives will be like in 5 years, 10 years, what profession they will have, where they will live, what the world will be like, etc.
2. Talk about what the students did over the weekend, what they like to do, what their goals, dreams are.
3. If something controversial is happening at school or in the community, talk about it.
4. Talk about what could be done to improve classes, the school, the community, the environment.
5. Talk about favorite bands, singers, TV shows, etc.
6. Talk about current events in the world.
Tips – Be willing to go with the flow of the conversation. Make it a casual, fun environment.

This is one idea from "Over 50 World Language Games to Spice Up Your Classroom". Also available in French and Spanish versions. 



We always host an International Festival close to International Week at our school. Students
in World Language classes and in the World Language Club prepare popular desserts from the cultures of languages we teach and we sell them during lunches. Each ticket is worth 25 cents and the proceeds go toward a $500 scholarship to a language student who responds to an essay question. Students then use this money to help fund their college experience. 
-Madame H 



In French club, we make crepes twice a year and crafts such as berets, Christmas ornaments and Mardi Gras masks. We watch music videos that I find on NRJ.com and rate them according to craziest, funniest, most energetic, and best story. We watch music videos and rank the songs, then vote on the ones we like the best. We also watch videos from Paris fashion week and rate the designers and clothes. We play games such as boules, Wheel of Fortune (each team gets a die, they roll to find out how much they will get when they guess a consonant correctly), trivia basketball game and hangman. I have a great French Club resource that I put together with the directions for the crafts, recipes, ideas for holiday celebrations and all the trivia questions/Wheel of Fortune sentences/hangman words, etc. which you can purchase at teacherspayteachers.com - it's under Robin Noudali. It takes all the pressure away from planning French club meetings because I've done all the work for you!
-Robin Noudali


I Speak Your Language offers the following tips:
First, try inviting foreign exchange and immigrant students who speak the target language to join your club. They may be able to help with different presentations sharing their own experiences.

1) Teach a Spanish dance, such as “La Cucaracha”.
2) Have a “craft night” and make Mexican paper flowers or “Ojos de
Dios".
3) Invite a guest speaker (such as a foreign exchange student) to do a
power point presentation on his or her country. Many exchange
students come prepared to do such presentations.
4) Celebrate Carnaval or Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) by planning a fun
evening. If your school has both Spanish and French Clubs, plan a
celebration together. Have a costume party where the French
students come as famous French people and the Spanish students
masquerade as famous Hispanics. Have students vote for the best
costume and award a prize.
5) Plan a night out at a Spanish restaurant.
6) Celebrate Navidad by learning some Spanish carols and go
Christmas caroling. If you have some Hispanic families in your
community, carol at their homes and bring a small bag of treats for
the children.


@SorianoSpanish suggest "Games like scattegories, Kahoot trivia, cooking, dance lessons, lyricstraining, crafts!

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