Language+Manipulatives


 * Great ideas for ACTIVE, "HANDS ON" language practice **
 * __SWCOLT Presentation Handout -- Teri Griffin__**


 * 1. CARD SETS **

**• Colors** – Cut up sheets of cardstock (for each of the colors you are teaching) into small squares and put together in sets with one of each color. **• Seasons** –Simple illustrations that represent each of the 4 seasons. Copy each onto a color that matches the season. (ie. Winter = grey, Spring = light green, Summer = yellow, Fall = orange) **• Numbers** – One number per card 0 – 9 **•Thematic vocabulary – families, clothing, professions, adjectives, food etc.** - use clip art, pictures from textbooks or workbooks, online flashcards, pictures cut from magazines, simple drawings. Copy or glue on to cardstock and cut apart. **• Alphabet cards** – Can also use alphabet magnets, blocks, //Scrabble// tiles to practice spelling **• Words -- Pre-reading vocabulary, sight words**

• Call out vocabulary words and have students hold up the correct card. Students can hold them up high and race each other, or hold them “secretly” in front of their chest, or place them down on their desks. When everyone has it, repeat the word as a class. • Ask a question. Students hold up the card that answers the question. Repeat the words. • Call 3 or 4 words in order and have the student place them in that order on their desk. • TPR-like activities where students place the cards around or on themselves, following commands from the teacher. (ie. Place “winter” on your book, put “spring” on top of your head.) For classroom vocabulary the students can place the card on their desk to correlate with the location of the actual object in the classroom. (If the clock is on the wall to the right, students place the card on the right side of their desk.) • Game: “Grab the card first”. 4 students sit together around a desk. All cards from the set are laid out on the desk. Students take turns being the “teacher” and calling out one of the cards and the other three race to see who can find it first, say the word, and hold it up. • Another game is “I have it!” Students work in pairs and split one set of cards between them (so that neither of them has a complete set). Students hold cards in their hands or lay them out on their desks. The teacher calls out a card and the partner who has that particular card holds it up and says “I have it”. That student gets a point. • Students can also use these card sets to quiz each other as a warm-up or bell-ringer activity before class or during practice time. • If cards are prepared as sets with doubles, or combined temporarily, they can be used for games like “Go fish!”, “Memory” or “Old Maid”. • Use weather cards along with a map of the world. Describe the weather in a country and have students place the correct weather icon on the map. Or have the students discuss weather in pairs, and place their cards. Or have the students randomly place the cards and then ask each other about the weather in each country. • Combine sets of cards to practice asking questions or making phrases. – For example: Use cards with “places” vocabulary at the same time as cards with “family” vocabulary. Put cards face down and draw a “family” card and ask “Where is your _ (Dad)? Draw a “place” card to respond. He’s at _ (the park).
 * ACTIVITIES ** - Cards can be used in a variety of ways:

**RESOURCES for CARDS** Blackline masters included with many of the older textbooks Black and white illustrations from workbooks Clip art and Google images. Great printable masters on [|www.eslflashcards.com/] Cricut Machine Parents


 * 2. CUT OUTS **

**• Clothing** – paper dolls with cut outs to practice clothing and colors. **• Shapes**– example: Pumpkin card with pocket in back that holds small shapes cut out of black (circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles). Have the students follow directions to place eyes, nose, mouth (even hair, and ears) on using the shapes (“Put two circles for eyes, a square for a nose and 3 triangles for a mouth). As the students place the shapes on their pumpkins, the teacher places shapes on a transparency version of the pumpkin. When the directions are complete, turn on the projector and the students will be excited to compare their pumpkin face to yours. You can do this one over and over! **• Furniture** – Cut outs of furniture and other basic items in a house. Give students a sheet of paper and have them arrange the furniture on the paper as if it were a room. Or on their desktop if furniture cards are bigger. Use to practice vocabulary but also to work on prepositions, or for //near// and //far//. • **People cut outs** – can be combined with maps to practice locations, directions, commands, etc. This will allow students to practice movement with their cut-out instead of the chaos of everyone running around the room.


 * 3. WIPE OFF BOARDS **

Students love wipe off boards! But even better, they allow you to see what each student is doing. Walk around to see answers or have the students hold them up as they finish.

• Boards can be purchased through educational supply stores or websites. • 4’ x 8’ sheets of wood with a wipe-clean laminate finish can be purchased at building supply or home improvement stores and then cut into 10” x 10” or 12” x 12” boards. • 1inch white binders (with the clear plastic over vinyl covers ) can also be used as whiteboards. • White cardstock in a clear sheet protector works great as “wipe off boards. Heavy duty ones hold up a bit better but the basic ones work great as well. ”. Use dry-erase whiteboard markers to write and either bathroom tissues, napkins, paper towels or wash cloths to wipe off.
 * RESOURCES **

• Show pictures, students write the word. • Say a word, student draw a picture • “Pictionary” type games (Describe an object (person, activity) students draw it and others guess what it is • Practice verb forms  • Record group answers for vocab, grammar or culture games
 * ACTIVITIES **

• You can copy vocabulary-specific visuals onto white paper or cardstock and put them inside the sheet protector, for example: • a large clock face with no hands -- practice telling time. (Say the time, and have the students draw in the hands.) • an outline of a body -- have students use it to draw in details to practice body parts, or draw in clothing. • simple drawings of a boy and/or a girl or a face -- practice body parts by giving instructions such as: “Draw a circle around the eyes,” “put a triangle on the nose” “draw squares in the hair”, etc. • a scene with farm animals – call out names of animals, have them number the animals in the order that you call them. • a verb chart -- conjugate verbs.


 * 4. DICE and CUBES **

Students enjoy throwing things. **IDEAS FOR DIE/CUBE SIDES and ACTIVITIES** **Vocabulary Cubes:** (colors, clothing, animals, family members, etc.) •Have students roll the cube and say the word on the side that lands face up, or make a sentence using that word, or ask a question about the word, and so on. • Combine two sets of cubes (such as colors and clothes) and have students form sentences including both words (The shirt is yellow). **Pronoun cubes:** (I, you, he, she, we etc.) • Provide a list of verbs, or call out verbs one at a time. Students roll the cube and quickly conjugate the verb according to the pronoun that comes up. **Verb tenses:** (Present, Future, Past, etc.) Students practice phrases or conversations on a topic. Each time they roll the cube, they change to use the tense indicated on the cube. **6 Categories** (ie. snacks, school lunch, restaurants, breakfast foods, candy, fruit) • Practice talking about likes (and dislikes) by rolling the die and forming a sentence using a food from the category you rolled. School lunch – I don’t like the lumpy rice pudding. Breakfast foods – I love pancakes and syrup. • Share an experience relating to the category you roll. (shopping, school, my family) **Emotion cubes:** (Pictures or words – sad, happy, angry, hopeful, etc. ) • Roll the cube and relate an experience when you felt that emotion. • Practice patterns like I am happy because. I feel sad when _. • Combine with a “family” cube to talk about how others in the family feel. **Dice or Number cubes:** • Dice can be used, of course, to practice numbers. Advanced students should roll two dice and add up numbers or lay the dice side by side and say the double-digit number indicated. • A great idea that cuts down on the work it takes to make cubes is to have a handout or transparency listing words that correspond to each number on the die. This way the same dice could be used over and over for many different activities. List the numbers 1 – 6 (or for more options, use dice with more sides – see online resources) and assign a vocabulary word, a verb, a pronoun, a task, etc. to each number. (If we were practicing classroom vocabulary. 1= desk 2= window 3= chair 4=poster 5=pencil 6=shelf. When possible use clip art or illustrations rather than English words in order to make a more direct connection • Spinners are also a fun variation on dice and cubes.

• Buy dice, blocks, or cubes in craft stores, toys stores, DI, etc. and paste labels on them. • Print patterns on cardstock, cut out and tape together. Printable patterns for cutting and folding your own dice can be found on: [] [] [|http://scrapbooking.about.com/od/layouts/ig/Christmas-Tree-Ornaments/Free-Cube- Pattern.-0IJ.htm]
 * RESOURCES **


 * 5. FIGURINES **

**Homies, or other little people** Small plastic people figurines work great for many activities. Toys from Happy Meals, action figures from DI or Savers, LEGO people, Sesame Street characters, etc. **Puppets and stuffed animals** – dollar store, washcloth puppets, finger puppets, Beanie babies (Savers). Creative Ideas for figurines: Use //Teddy Grahams// crackers or hand out mini marshmallows and let kids draw faces on them with Sharpie markers. Give them a pipe cleaner and 1 minute to shape a person from it. **Felipe and Marta** Felipe and Marta are the names of our “class goldfish”. We use them when we are working on dialogs or practicing conversational patterns. Using large pictures of goldfish crackers and laminated “speech bubbles” we establish and practice the dialog as a class. When the students are ready to practice on their own, they each get two goldfish crackers. With one cracker in each hand, they practice the dialog between Felipe and Marta. (It’s amazing how they loosen up and start talking just because they have crackers to do it with). After they have successfully practiced the dialog on their own, they get to eat one of their goldfish and then pair up with a partner. Now they each have one goldfish and they take turns playing the parts of Felipe and Marta.

**ACTIVITIES** • Use figurines with a visual of a house move them around from room to room to practice vocabulary, prepositions, question words. • Copy a floor plan of your school and use the figures to practice directions, school vocabulary, prepositions, school subjects, etc. • Use a map from a textbook or the internet and figurines to practice giving and following directions. • Use puppets for dialogs and role-playing. This often brings out the “actor” in their character and encourages them to talk more.

Target dollar section //Dollar Store// Thrift Store Your child’s toybox :)
 * RESOURCES **


 * 6. ACTIVITY SHEETS **

**Scenes --** Magazine pictures, drawings or other scenes that students can look at together and use to engage in conversation, asking and answering questions, discussing opinions. **•** Party and Classroom scene, (Spanish samples)

**__Information Gap –__** An Information Gap Activity is supposed to mimic one of the real-world purposes of communication: to exchange unknown information. Most information gap activities are done in pairs, with each student having a part of the information. . The information needed to complete a task is divided into two parts, (usually separated out onto two handouts: information A and information B.) Students are divided into pairs; one student is given the handout with information A and the other student will have the handout with information B. Students will then ask each other questions and try to complete their handouts by filling in the missing information. • **Scenes** that are similar but have differences. Students find the differences. • **Information in a grid or chart** layout in which handouts A and B have complementary information. A school schedule, a calendar, a job chart, etc.) • **A set of pictures** with two of every picture and enough total for each person in the class. Each student gets a picture then walks around the room asking the other students questions (without showing each other the pictures) until they find the student who has the one that matches their own.  **__Stuff Gap__**  An activity where someone else has the stuff you need to win the game. You must use all your language skills to get the stuff you need.  • Market Day Game. Divide a stack of picture cards with random or unrelated objects between the students so that each student has 3 - 5 cards. The object is to trade your cards with other students to turn your random hand into a matching set that is worth more that what you started with. For example, if I start with a clock, a shoe, a duck, and sun. I could maybe trade the clock and the shoe for a tree and a bunny. Then I would have a set of things that are from nature (duck, tree, sun, bunny). Or say the duck and the sun are yellow, I could trade the clock and the flower for other things that are yellow. Since the clock and sun are both round, I could trade the shoe and the duck for other round items, and so on. The students talk in the language and ask each other what they have and what they are willing to trade for. Encourage creative trading, partnerships and anything that engages the students in conversation. The class can vote on the “best” or “most valuable set” or the teacher can pick a winner. **__Picture Stories__** Pictures panels that tell a story. Students look at the pictures and tell the story in Arabic. Pictures can also be cut apart and students must arrange them into the logical order to create the // story // from beginning to end.

• Parents who like to volunteer. (They can color and cut at home) File box. • Scrapbookers (They have paper cutters and //Cricut// machines!) • Classroom aides. (Easy projects to work on if they finish other duties) • Students who like to help make things. Use “bad schedule” days or extra credit. • High school students (Many are looking for service hours) • Family and Friends (Ask them to keep an eye out for bargains and useful objects) • Dollar stores, and dollar sections (Target), Deseret Industries, and Savers • Flashcard Websites and coloring page websites. • Elementary teachers and art teachers (They may have things you can borrow)
 * GENERAL MATERIALS RESOURCES **

Laminate cards for longer wear Use envelope pouches to keep sets together. The students don’t mind if they’re not perfect. Dollar store boxes and bags are great for storage.
 * __HELPFUL HINTS__**