I’m delighted to have Ashley from Srta Spanish join our blog as a guest today! She wrote this awesome post with 5 favorite games for Spanish class. Read more about Ashley below, and be sure to grab your free game!
This time of year it’s easy to run into a lull, feeling exhausted and just drained of ideas. Check out 5 of my favorite games to play so you can change things up from your usual and have some fun!
¡Mi Lápiz! One of My Five Favorite Games for Spanish Class!
¡Mi Lápiz! is a review game known by many names. Some people simply call it, “The Dice Game”, others call it “¡Seis!”, or “Surrender in Seis”. There’s almost ZERO set-up, but the engagement is huge!
Set Up:
- Pairs or small groups of students
- 1 die per group
- 1 pencil per group
- A worksheet per student
How to Play:
- The point of the game is to be the first to complete the sheet/set of questions correctly.
- There is only one pencil, because only one person may write at a time.
- Begin with the pencil in the middle. Take turns rolling the die. The first person to get a six gets to take the pencil and start writing.
- Everyone else continues to roll. As soon as someone else gets a six, they get to take the pencil and start writing
To see more variations and grab free slides to project while playing with your students, check out the blog post here!
¡Corre en Círculos!
This is one of my 5 favorite games for Spanish class because it is a game that gets students up and out of their seats – although I hesitate to tell a student “¡Corre!” in a classroom! The game is played like a scavenger hunt trail, as students move from card to card around the room until they make their way back to the beginning of the circle.
Set Up:
- Print, cut, and hang clue cards (or spread them around the room)
- Copy the student handout (or let them do it on a blank sheet of paper)
That’s it! I usually ask students to help set up the game by setting tape dispensers and the clue cards on a desk right by the door. I would often have classes with more students than clue cards so it doesn’t take them long at all.
How to play:
- Students can start at any clue card around the room.
- Read a prompt at the bottom of a starting clue card.
- Record their answer to the prompt.
- Find their answer on the top of a new page.
- Look at the prompt on the bottom of the new page, record their answer, then find the next sheet.
They finish when they get back to the beginning of the circle and have used all the clue cards!
See more examples and grab a free set of clue cards to play with in the blog post here!
El Toro: Game 3 out of 5 Favorite Games for Spanish
El Toro is a fast-paced verb trading game “El Toro”. I often describe it to my students as “Go Fish, but everyone fishes at once”.
Set Up:
You need a set of cards with all the verb forms (yo, tú, usted, etc) you want to review, and one verb for each person playing (ser, tener, etc). Shuffle the cards and deal them out until all of the cards are gone (6 cards/player).
*If you are not including the vosotros form, each player will get 5 cards.
How to Play:
When I explain this game to students, I model a round in slow motion with a group in front of the class. It’s so much easier when you can just show this one! With that in mind, I made a video walkthrough to show how it works here.
The goal of the game is to collect all of the forms of one verb- for example, “hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan”. The dealer starts the round by calling “¡Vamos!”.
Players trade matching verbs by calling out the number they are willing to trade (“dos, dos”) and swapping when they find another player willing to trade. Players can ONLY trade forms of the same verb. So they could trade “hablo” and “habla”, but not “hablo” and “bailo” because those are different verbs. The round ends when someone has collected all the forms of the verbs, stands up, and says “¡El Toro!”.
It is fast paced, and I often tell students to play for a certain amount of time, or a certain number of rounds before switching up groups because one round is so quick!
Another option that’s fun with this one is to teach students how to play Spoons and El Toro, then let them choose. They use the same supplies, so it’s a simple way to build in that student choice for even more engagement.
Grab a set of cards to play with in the blog post here!
Running Dictation
Game 4 out of 5 favorite games for Spanish is a running dictation. This is a way to do dictation activities that incorporates teamwork and movement. Students work in pairs or small groups with each person having an active role!
Set Up:
- Write 9-12 sentences or pull them from a reading
- Print & hang sentence strips in the hallway (if possible), or make them small and put them around your room.
- Print & make copies of the student handout
How to Play:
One student is the “runner” and the other is the “writer”. The runner heads out to the hall, picks a sentence, memorizes it, then returns and says it to the writer. The writer does their best to record the sentence on the student handout. Sometimes this process needs to be repeated a few times until the student can remember the whole sentence!
Halfway through, students swap jobs. If there is a 3 person group, have them rotate jobs and add in the role of “illustrator” to draw a picture of the sentence.
Meme Game
This is like a popular party game – Apples to Apples! It’s great for students working on their language skills in a relaxed setting. It’s the last of the 5 favorite games for Spanish class in this post!
Set Up:
- Print the meme images. I would suggest printing on cardstock and laminating.
- Print the situations (pages 3-8). I suggest printing them on a different color cardstock & laminating.
- Cut all of the cards apart.
I would make enough sets so you have enough for a couple groups of students to play. The smaller the group the faster the rounds! I think ideally groups of 4-5 would be best!
How to Play:
The judge flips over one situation card and reads it out loud. Next, everyone participating, except the judge, plays a meme card face down to “react” to the situation. The judge then shuffles the meme cards face down, so they don’t know whose is whose. Finally, the judge flips each meme card over to show them to all playing and selects which one they like best! (Some judges choose funniest, or most ironic – this is up to the judge!).
The winner keeps the situation card, while the used meme cards go to the bottom of the deck. The person to the left of the judge is the new judge, and the next round begins! You can play as many rounds as you want. You can play ten full rounds, or play until one player has 5 situation cards, or you could play 3 short rounds and see who has the most situation cards! There’s a lot of variation.
Resources
Check out pre-made sets to go with many of the games I’ve mentioned here:
Related Posts
- 20 Spanish Vocabulary Games
- 13 Review Games for Spanish Class
- How to Play 16 Spanish Games for Conjugation
- 5 Vocab Games for Spanish Class
About the Author:
Hi! My name is Ashley and I am the Spanish teacher and blogger behind Srta Spanish. I started my blog after constantly being inspired by other teachers and what they were sharing on social media and wanting to contribute to the conversation! It was scary at first, but it has been a great place for me to share resources and reflect.
