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.

Image source: https://calendar.syracuse.edu/events/2020-nov-04/intramural-sports-charades/

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):

• List of French Irregular Past Participles (info sheet for students)

• Irregular Past Participle Charades (to cut into prompts)

• French Irregular Past Participle Crossword (to reinforce learning)

• French Irregular Past Participle Crossword Key

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!

The 7 Cs of Drama

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consider the 7 Cs of drama (community, communication, creativity, confidence, cultural sensitivity, carrot (not stick), and content knowledge) that are research-supported reasons to incorporate drama into the foreign language classroom.

Drama, particularly improv, is often seen as the fun reward of language classes – students are allowed some ‘play time’ as a reward for doing ‘actual learning’. In fact, I would argue that drama/improv itself is the real learning, and that the inclusion of drama into the second language classroom is incredibly important for a variety of reasons!

There is a lot of research supporting this, and below, I’ve gathered all the studies, position papers, and books that I have come across that show how amazing drama is! I’ve divided the benefits into seven categories (all conveniently starting with a C!) to make the myriad of benefits easier to see. Feel free to share this with colleagues that may doubt your pedagogical choices or to motivate your like-minded colleagues (and yourself) to include more drama activities!

To summarize, academic research shows that:

• Community – Drama/improv creates a sense of community in the language classroom

• Communication – Students are able to communicate better when using drama/improv to learn a language

• Creativity – Drama/improv lets both students and teachers be more creative

• Confidence – Students become more confident in their use of the target language when engaged in drama/improv activities

• Cultural sensitivity – Drama/improv allows students to better understand different cultures, as well as their own

• Carrot (not stick) – Students are more motivated to learn a language when engaging in drama/improv

• Content knowledge – Drama/improv improves student’s understanding of the target language (including grammar)

 To be specific: (Note: Drama is used below to refer to studies that are looking at ‘drama’ in general, and improv is used when the academic research is referring to improv activities specifically)

Community

• Students develop cooperation, social awareness, and community-building skills through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama creates group cohesion (Badie, 2014)

• In improv, both teachers and students must let go of their own ideas and accept the other participants’ ideas as better than their own (Keränen, 2019)

• Improv promotes inclusion of students with special needs, as “things that might be considered a disruption during other activities can be incorporated into the activity in a new way” and that “there is enough variety and flavor in improv to allow for anyone’s strengths to be made use of” (Lobman & Linquist, 2007, p. 25).

• In traditional language classrooms, students are focused on individual improvement and teachers strive to meet individual needs. However, improv performers consider their scenes as collaborations between players, and sometimes even the audience (Perone, 2011).

• The fundamentals of improv (‘yes, and’, ‘no mistakes, only opportunities’, and ‘make everyone look good’) create collaborative and supportive environments (Piccoli, 2018)

• The use of improv increases engagement, which contributes to a stronger classroom community, which in turn makes space for previously marginalized students (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Image: https://bit.ly/3SsMyDn

Communication

• The value of improv is that students can immediately apply new language structures and that students can focus on engaging with the language rather than rules (Florea, 2011)

• Decades of research have shown that drama improves L2 speaking skills (Galante, 2018)

• The repetitive nature of drama activities helped build fluency and helped students develop strategies for all types of novel speaking tasks (Galante & Thomson, 2017)

• Improvised scenes disappear and forevermore unattainable, forcing teachers and learns to be in the moment (Keränen, 2019)

• A priori scripts, such as written dialogues found in many language textbooks, are fixed, and therefore convey to learners that there is a right and wrong way to communicate. In contrast, emergent scripts, such as improv scenes, show that communication has infinite possible iterations (Perone, 2011)

Creativity

• Student’s imaginations and capacity for independent, critical and creative thinking are developed through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama in L2 learning can foster imagination (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• A theatrical focus in the language class makes students more spontaneous and creative, as well as less inhibited by their linguistic limits (Cristea, 2019)

• Improv allows students to think and act more creatively and freely “by using their minds, bodies and voices to produce texts” (Lenters & Smith, 2018, p. 188)

• The process-focused nature of improv allows students to explore an infinite number of possible scenarios (Piccoli, 2018)

• Drama improves students’ creativity through the use of imagination, independent thinking, and risk-taking (Rojabi & Mustofa, 2021)

Confidence

• Drama improves students’ self-confidence and communication skills while lessening speaking anxiety (Atas, 2015)

• Drama in L2 learning can increase learner confidence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• By allowing students to use fictional contexts, and therefore embody fictional characters, students are less anxious (Even, 2004)

• Drama activities lower foreign-language anxiety (Galante, 2018)

• Students can minimize anxiety by creating a target language-speaking persona who is able to take the risks while “mitigating the loss of one’s self” (Gillette & Perry, 2021, p. 586)

• Drama creates an “error-tolerant instructional environment, distinguishing clearly between opportunities for communicative action and opportunities for communicative reflection (including systematic error treatment and language practice)” (Kurtz, 2011, p. 150)

• In traditional language classes, learners see themselves as novices and can therefore be hindered by their own anxiety around making errors. When using improv, however, performers make the assumption that everyone is an expert and that there is no standard or expectations of perfection (Perone, 2011)

• The most improvement in confidence for students using drama activities was those who self-identified as being the most anxious at the start of the course (Piazzoli, 2011)

• Improv builds students’ self-confidence by letting them focus on their natural desire to play rather on the possibility of embarrassment (Piccoli, 2018)

• Students were more motivated and confident on speaking and writing tasks when engaged in improv-based literacy activities (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Cultural sensitivity

• Drama furthers cross-cultural understanding (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama in L2 learning can promote intercultural communicative competence (Belliveau & Kim, 2013)

• Students who learned through drama were better able to reflect critically about culture (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

• Students are better able to understand the target culture (Gillette & Perry, 2021)

• In exploring, and creating dramatic texts, “students may explore their own cultures and identities rather than simply being exposed to the culture of the target language or rehearsing language in a behaviorist fashion” (McGovern, 2017, p. 10)

• Drama allows students to share their own culture with peers (Ntelioglou, 2011)

Image: https://bit.ly/3xNGvSb

Carrot (not stick)

• Students who learned through drama had more intrinsic motivation and wrote more of their own volition (Bournot-Trites, et al., 2007)

• By disrupting traditional language learning, students learning through drama are able to “negotiate and take control over their learning identities” (Cahmann-Taylor & McGovern, 2021, p. 32)

• Students and teachers have more freedom, as unlike in most outcome-based instruction, the outcomes of improv do not have to be predetermined or the same for every student (Lenters & Smith, 2018)

• Students are more motivated when using drama due to authentic texts and use of dramatic tension (Piazzoli, 2011)

• The playful nature of improv increases student engagement (Smith & McKnight, 2009)

Content knowledge

• Students acquire fully contextualized vocabulary, grammar, and a better understanding of idiomatic expressions through drama (Angeliannawati, 2019)

• Drama increases students’ engagement in, and understanding of, grammatical concepts (Even, 2004 & 2011)

• Improv is an interrelated cognitive and social activity that allows students to help each other negotiate the gaps in their individual linguistic knowledge sets (Kurtz, 2011)

• Vygotsky’s framework of the Zones of Proximal Development dovetail with improv, as both involve taking risks, making mistakes, and supporting others on their language journeys (Lobman & Lundquist, 2007)

• Drama can be used to reinforce grammar concepts if students are given appropriate activities and linguistic guidance (Mochizuki & Ortega, 2008)

• In a controlled study comparing a drama condition and a traditional instruction condition, students’ understanding of verb tenses improved when taught using drama (O’Gara, 2008)

• Drama “revealed inadequacies of language skills which had somehow remained hidden from more traditional methods of assessment” (O’Gara, 2008, p. 163)

What are your thoughts about the 7 Cs of drama/improv? Is there an eighth C that you think I missed? Share in the comments!

 Sources:

• Angelianawati, L. (2019). Using drama in EFL classroom. Journal of English Teaching, 5(2), 125-134.

• Atas, M. (2015). The reduction of speaking anxiety in EFL learners through drama techniques. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 176, 961-969.

• Badie, G. T. (2014). Using theater concepts in the TESOL classroom. The CATESOL Journal, 26(1), 23-28.

• Belliveau, G., & Kim, W. (2013). Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis. Scenario (Cork), VII(2), 7-27.

• Bournot-Trites, M., Belliveau, G., Spiliotopoulos, V., & Séror, J. (2007). The role of drama on cultural sensitivity, motivation and literacy in a second language context. Journal for Learning through the Arts: A Research Journal on Arts Integration in Schools and Communities, 3(1), Article 9, 1-35.

• Cahnmann-Taylor, M. & McGovern, K.R. (2021). Enlivening instruction with drama and improv: A guide for second language and world language teachers. Routledge.

• Cristea, E. (2019). Theatrical activities in the foreign language class: Activités théâtrales dans la classe de langues étrangères. Euromentor Journal, 10(2), 71-82.

• Cunico, S. (2005). Teaching language and intercultural competence through drama: Some suggestions for a neglected resource. Language Learning Journal, 31(1), 21-29.

• Dundar, S. (2013). Nine drama activities for foreign language classrooms: Benefits and challenges. Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 1424-1431.

• Even, S. (2004). Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice. GFL-Journal 1: 35-51.

• Even, S. (2011). Drama grammar: Towards a performative postmethod pedagogy. The Language Learning Journal, 39:3, 299-312.

• Florea, P. (2011). Using improvisation exercises for increasing speaking and listening skills. Asian EFL Journal, 52, 46-57.

• Galante, A. (2018). Drama for L2 speaking and language anxiety: Evidence from Brazilian EFL learners. RELC Journal, 49(3), 273-289.

• Galante, A., & Thomson, R. I. (2017). The effectiveness of drama as an instructional approach for the development of second language oral fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1), 115-142.

• Gillette, C. A. R., & Perry, K. H. (2021). Performing fluency: Using improv and drama with adult English learners. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(5), 585-588.

• Keränen, A. (2019). Finish language teaching through improvisation – Conforming the educational values within an improvisational frame. The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, 11:2, 63-78.

• Kurtz, J. (2011). Breaking through the communicative cocoon: Improvisation in secondary school foreign language classrooms. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 133-161). Cambridge University Press.

• Lenters, K., & Smith, C. (2018). Assembling improv and collaborative story building in language arts class. The Reading Teacher, 72(2), 179-189.

• Lobman, C., & Lundquist, M. (2007). Unscripted learning: Using improv activities across the K-8 curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

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

• Mochizuki, N., & Ortega, L. (2008). Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign language classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization. Language Teaching Research: LTR, 12(1), 11-37.

• Ntelioglou, B.Y. (2011). Insights from a drama-EAL classroom: Using drama with English language learners in a Canadian high school. In J. Winston (Ed.), Second language learning through drama (pp. 93-103). New York: Routledge.

• O'Gara, P. (2008). To be or have not been: Learning language tenses through drama. Issues In Educational Research, 18(2), 156-166.

• Perone, A. (2011). Improvising with adult English language learners. In R. Sawyer (Ed.), Structure and improvisation in creative teaching (pp. 162-183). Cambridge University Press.

• Piazzoli, E. (2011). Process drama: The use of affective space to reduce language anxiety in the additional language learning classroom. Research in Drama Education, 16(4), 557-573.

• Piccoli, M. W. (2018). Improvisation: A creative theatrical technique to engage English language learners. TESOL Journal, 9(4). doi:10.1002/tesj.390

• Rojabi, A. R., & Mustofa, A. (2021). Exploiting drama for children in EFL teaching to promote creativity, confidence, and motivation. Journal of English Education and Teaching, 5(4), 544-555.

• Smith, K., & McKnight, K. S. (2009). Remembering to laugh and explore: Improvisational activities for literacy teaching in urban classrooms. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 10(12).

Inclusive Pronouns en français: Sam Utilise Iel

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use inclusive language when referring to your non-binary students.

I am SUPER excited to share a small book that I have been working on called “Sam Utilise Iel” (illustrated by the amazing Spencer Cook) which follows a young French immersion student who wants their class to be able to use gender inclusive language in French as well as English. It’s in black-and-white on 8x11 paper, perfect for printing out to use in your class or project onto the board.

As a non-native French speaker, I have had a several French speakers review the book, as well as those who work in the academic sphere writing about non-binary identities. Of course, if you find anything offensive, wrong, or misguided, feel free to reach out to let me know! You can also find out more about inclusive French in this blog post, or in the links included at the end of the story.

Without further ado: Happy Pride & please enjoy “Sam Utilise Iel”!

DOWNLOAD PDF: Sam Utilise Iel

Update: A big thank you to Dr. Bournot-Trites for pointing out some errors. As of 06/19/2022 the above PDF has been changed to a corrected version.

You can also check out some other resources to use in your classroom for Pride Month here.

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: Drama Grammar Part II

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the Drama Grammar method to structure improv lessons in your classroom that are grammatically focused.

This is Part II in a two-part series about the Drama Grammar method created by Susanne Evens. In the first post I explored the method, as outlined by Evens in her 2004 and 2011 articles. In this post I will be explaining how I would adapt Drama Grammar for my particular context (middle and high school students) and teaching style.

SCROLL DOWN TO DOWNLOAD THE DRAMA GRAMMAR TEMPLATE

The framework proposed by Even is fantastic, and as I outlined in my previous post, has a lot that I like about it! However, for use in my own classroom, there are a few adaptations that I wanted to make, such as making it a non-linear and reducing it to four phases. What I wanted to address by revising the framework was:

• It seems from her articles that Even has an almost exclusive focus on Drama Grammar in her second language classroom. While I really like the model, I wanted something more flexible and easier to integrate into other lesson plans.

• Even taught second-year German to students at the University of Leicester for a full academic year; I teach younger students (ages 13-18) and do not have a full year with them. I wanted to have a framework that would work for shorter attention spans and shorter class times. Therefore, the awareness-raising and context-finding phases can be combined into one phase of ‘context-exploration’.

• Moreover, four phases fits nicely with the Systemic Functional Linguistics model of the teaching-learning cycle (Gebhard, 2019; Gibbons, 2015) which begins with “building the field or context” as its first step

• While I understand that the context-finding phase is trying to create an authentic need for the language structure, I think that it is difficult to mimic real-world contexts in a classroom using a game or activity. Rather than try to force this, I would put the emphasis on finding authenticity in the scenes being created by students. I think just creating a need for a grammatical structure in order to play a game can be enough.

• Even used a lot of process drama techniques and activities (such as teacher-in-role, co-constructing, hot-seating, assuming the mantle of the expert, etc.). While I think there is value to process drama, I tend to favor the more classic improvisational games, which can tend to be more goofy and less focused on creating authentic contexts (see above).

• The presentation phase is, by its name, focused on presentation of scenes. I would like this to be optional, and focus more on the dramatic play phase, as I want to be more process orientated than production orientated (see here for further discussions on how drama can be conceptualized in the classroom). Therefore, the two phases are combined into a ‘story phase’ to put the emphasis on the narrative being co-constructed by students.

• I don’t want to be confined to a liner model. Instead, the phases could easily flow into each other or be moved around.  For example, students could weave between the context-exploration phase and the grammar phase, or alternatively the grammar phase and the story phase, as the teacher adds in more information.  Alternatively, students could be in the story phase, be asked to reflect, and then return to the story phase to make adjustments based on their reflections before presenting.

Therefore, for use in my own classroom, I would break the Drama Grammar method into these four phases:

1. Context-exploration phase: the need for a structure is introduced through small games or scenarios. Students may be given sentence stems or models, though grammatical instruction is not given at this point.

2. Grammar phase: explicit or co-constructed grammar lesson(s) occurs.

3. Story phase: students create scenes based on a prompt (visual, textual, or vocabulary, etc.) and focus on incorporating the newly learned grammatical structure. Presentation can be to the whole group, another smaller group, just the teacher, or to no audience at all. (If you’re looking for some different prompts to start your scenes, check out this post!)

4. Reflection Phase: students reflect on their grammar use, but also their ability to tell a story, cooperate with peers, and engage with their own learning.

I was explaining these ideas to a friend recently and joked that it’s now the (L)even model of Drama Grammar: it’s all Susanne Even’s ideas but I, Aviva Levin, have come along and changed it up a bit!  Joking aside, I wanted to share with you the planning sheet I created to help facilitate my own lesson construction:

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE (.DOC): Drama Grammar Planning Template.docx

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE (.PDF): Drama Grammar Planning Template.pdf

I’ve made an example of how I would use this model for my own lessons. For example, if I were to do adapt my Theatre of the Absurd lesson, which deals with inverted questions and absurdist story telling techniques, to a Drama Grammar framework, I would plan it out like this:

 You can see that we start in the context-exploration phase, go into a grammar discussion, and then return to the same game (the delightful BOOGERS!) to re-explore with our new knowledge. I also am still unsure about the prompt I want to use for students: should it be a bag of objects or a hat full of words? Some classes might not need to prompt at all, and some might need more structure. I also have students presenting to each other and then only two groups presenting to the class. As for the reflections, I broke it into two: one think/pair/share about our understanding of the absurdist genre (reflecting on understanding and performing) and an exit slip (reflecting on grammar; I’d likely have students put two questions on a sticky note, then place it on a traffic light I have in the classroom to signal how well they think they understand inverted questions (red=still struggling; yellow=think I’m getting there; green=I feel very confident). One thing to think about is how the new knowledge is going to be reinforced after the lesson. Like Even had in her sample workshop, perhaps there will be a homework assignment? If I were to stick to my original lesson for the Theatre of the Absurd, students would write new scripts independently and I would check them over the next class.

What are your thoughts about how I’ve adapted the original Drama Grammar method? What adaptations would you want to make to have it fit in your own classroom? Share in the comments!

Using improv in the language classroom: Drama Grammar Part I

Your language teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the Drama Grammar method to structure improv lessons in your classroom that are grammatically focused.

This is Part I in a two-part series about the Drama Grammar method created by Susanne Evens. In this post I will be exploring the method, as outlined by Evens in her 2004 and 2011 articles. In Part II I will be explaining how I would adapt Drama Grammar for my particular context (middle and high school students) and teaching style.

Recognizing a need for grammar instruction, but wanting to stay away from traditional models, Even created the Drama Grammar method in 2004.

I was introduced to this approach in Susanne Even’s 2004 article “Dramagrammar in Theory and Practice”, in which she explained a new learning model that she has created called “Dramagrammar” (note: by 2011 it was changed to “Drama Grammar”). Drama Grammar was created when Even noticed that post-secondary students were entering universities without proficient grammatical knowledge, which she attributed to an emphasis on communication skills above grammar structures in their previous language education. Nonetheless, even when grammar instruction was introduced at the post-secondary level, students seemed unable to transfer this knowledge into their oral production. Even describes Drama Grammar as “a combination of language in use and language reflection” that integrates “dramatic acting with conscious language analysis” (2004, p. 42).  By replacing traditional grammar, which is devoid of meaning and context, with Drama Grammar, students are given more autonomy as their instructor is more of a guide than a font of knowledge and language learning becomes more social as teamwork is encouraged.

The Six Phases of Drama Grammar

Drama Grammar lessons are broken into six different phases:

1. Awareness-raising phase: grammar structures are elicited from students by creating imaginary situations in which the structure is necessary, usually in small warm-up games

2. Context-finding phase: learners use the structure during an improvised scene that mimics real-world contexts that necessitate the same grammar in a concrete form

3. Linguistic phase:  the dramatic flow is interrupted, and the teacher either explicitly teaches the grammar structure or encourages students to work out the rules themselves. This stage is placed in the middle instead of the beginning so that students have already experienced why they need this structure in order to communicate, which creates greater engagement.

4. Dramatic play phase: students draft and rehearse longer, more in-depth improvised scenes using their new grammatical knowledge

5. Presentation phase: students present their improvisations to their peers.

6. Reflection phase: students settle any remaining questions they have, talk about what worked or did not work, give praise, and reflect on their language awareness and learning process.

Sample Workshop

At the end of her 2004 article, Even runs through a workshop that she has previously delivered to language teachers at a conference, which was taught in English, in order to demonstrate how a Drama Grammar lesson might be taught:

1. First, in the awareness-raising phase, chairs are set up in pairs in a circle around a ‘stage’: one chair (the ‘observer’) can see what is happening on the stage, one (the ‘listener’) cannot. The teacher enters the room, wearing a mask, and performs a short pantomime, then leaves. The observer then describes what they see to the listener. Next, the listeners turn around, and when the teacher re-enters, they tell her what to do, based on the description they received. Once that is complete, the observers describe how the first and second pantomimes differed based on what had been described to the listeners by the observers. Finally, the teacher does the original pantomime, and both the listeners and the observers discuss the differences between the performances. Students are encouraged to use reported speech forms (e.g. “I told John that the person was walking around, but John then said that the person should sit down immediately”).

2. The class then enters the linguistic phase (note: the order of the phases are presented differently in the workshop example than in the article). The class discusses indirect/reported speech, and small groups write out what they believe to be the rules, and any questions they have, on large papers which they present to the larger group.

3. Next, in the context-finding stage, the class plays a modified version of ‘Telephone’ where sentences are said aloud, not whispered, and the wording is changed slightly each time, using reported speech. For example, if the first person says “Yesterday I went to the new bistro. It’s expensive, but the waiter is cute!”, the second person will say “Susanne says she went to the new bistro yesterday. She told me her meal cost a lot of money, and I think she has a crush on the waiter!”. At the end of the activity, the instructor addresses any questions about reported speech.

4. The next activity, as part of the drama play phase, is a continuation of the previous game. In small groups students present a visual/verbal presentation, which are tableaus of a transforming rumor that they have created.

5. Lastly, students are given homework that allows them to transfer their new knowledge to different contexts. In this example, students are given a text within which they must find all the forms of indirect speech, and identify the grammatical tense being used.  

What I like about Drama Grammar:

• The inclusion of a step of explicit reflection, which I am realizing that I need to do more of in my language classroom. Also, students have an opportunity to discuss the form and rules in an exploratory and collaborative manner rather than receive direct instruction.

• Personally, in the past, I would have been reluctant to pair a small group grammar discovery activity with improv because of the feeling that it was too much time wasted. Instead, I would have paired improv with an explicit grammar lesson, perhaps because I felt the need to prove that the improv activity was an extension of a more ‘valid’ traditional lesson. This method has made me consider some of my own pedagogical biases and how they influence my classroom practices.

• How Evens situates Drama Grammar within postmethod pedagogy, which resonates with me as a pedagogical framework as the emphasis is on “particularity, practicality, and possibility”. This helps me anticipate a common question that I get asked when I talk about improv in the foreign language classroom, which is “where does grammar come into this?” Within the context of postmethod pedagogy, I feel confident in saying, “as much or as little as your context requires”!

• The psychological and pedagogical benefits that Even observed in her students. Psychologically, students felt less afraid to make mistakes, and were willing to take more risks. They also felt more confident and motivated, and were able to form deeper connections with peers. Pedagogically, students were able to understand grammar both cognitively and contextually, and saw its utility beyond classroom exercises. This also enabled students to be better able to self-monitor their language learning, and made them more comfortable with grammar topics in general.

Links to check out:

• Even, S. (2004). Dramagrammar in theory and practice. GFL-Journal 1: 35-51.

• Even, S. (2011). Drama grammar: Towards a performative postmethod pedagogy. The Language Learning Journal, 39:3, 299-312.

• Slideshow: “Acting French: Avoiding grammatical drama by using drama to teach grammar” (synthesis of the method in six slides)

• Susanne Even’s Indiana University Bloomington profile

Check out Part II, where I will discuss how I hope to adapt Even’s Drama Grammar for my own context. What are your thoughts on Drama Grammar? Feel free to 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!

Warm-Up: Find 5 Things

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start class with a fun, visual warm-up game that enhances students’ vocabulary knowledge.

The “5 things” game is one that was modeled for me at a professional development session, and I used it the very next day in my classroom! My students like it, it’s easy to explain, there are literally infinite variations on it, and it somehow manages to be both competitive AND team building!

STEP ONE: Students are put into pairs (or threes if needed). They do not need to be sitting close to their ‘partner’, in fact, it’s better if they are not!

STEP TWO: The teacher puts up an image. Literally any image, as long as there are at least five things (hence the name) that can be identified.

STEP THREE: Ultimately, the goal of the game is to gain points by having the same five words as your partner to describe the picture (one point per answer, maximum five points per round). Once the image is revealed, I’ll give students a few minutes to write down their answers silently and secretly. So, for example, if I show this picture, a student might write down:

Image still from: The Princess and the Frog (Disney)

1. Princess

2. Frog

3. Night

4. Kiss

5. Tiara

This can be made harder or easier, more focused on grammar or less. For example, the first image I used was pretty simplistic. I’m not saying you should use Where’s Waldo, but an image of a Haitian market, for example, might make the game more difficult! If the parameters I give are just to have the same words, I always have the rule that all nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are all allowed EXCEPT for colors! Unless it’s a beginner-level class, having to rely on colors seems a bit like cheating to me. However, you can definitely make this more complex by putting stricter parameters around the image. For example, I may say that students need to find two nouns, two verbs, and one adjective.  Therefore, the imaginary student’s list might look like this:

1.     NOUN: a frog

2.     NOUN: a princess

3.     VERB: to kiss

4.     VERB: to blush

5.     ADJECTIVE: romantic

If you’re working on a particular grammatical construction, then you can put up an image and say “find five of the same verbs in the imperfect form”. Or if there is an image that involves a lot of unit vocabulary you can say “find five of the same words (doesn’t matter what part of speech), but spelling counts!”

STEP FOUR: Partners tally up the points (the silent and secret part is now over). Using the above first example, if Student A wrote princess, night, frog, kiss, tiara and Student B wrote princess, frog, kiss, gloves, dress then they would have 3 out of 5 possible points because they chose three of the same words. It’s then the honor system for students to share out how many points they have. Sometimes I’ll do multiple images and we’ll have a ‘winner’ for that day’s total. Other times, I’ll do an image a day for a week and we’ll have the ‘winner’ for that week’s total.

STEP FIVE: Share out some the answers! It’s a great way to build vocabulary for the rest of the class, and some of the answers can be really fun or surprising. My favorite question to ask is “what is a word that your partner had that you didn’t?” because those are usually the more unique words and students are more likely to share their partner’s answer in order to showcase their partner’s brilliance than they are their own (though that’s high school students, elementary students might be more open to sharing their own thoughts!)

STEP SIX: Continue using it as an intermittent warm-up for class and change it up however you see fit. I like using themed images (example, fairy tales for my fairy tale unit) but as long as the image is appropriate, why not use it! Like I mentioned above, I’ll put different parameters around the words they need to find and sometimes I give the ultimate difficult instruction: find five words that your partner DOES NOT have! Students only get points if their words are totally unique… so they really need to dig deep into their vocabulary knowledge stores. The other thing you can then do is use the same picture, now that they have a bunch of vocabulary at the ready, for a quickwrite.

 Some examples of dynamic pictures to use as prompts:

Have you ever played this game or a variation on it? Are there any constrictions or images you prefer using? Share in the comments!

Halloween Activities in the Language Classroom

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to provide fun activities so that your students can celebrate Halloween and/or enjoy spooky characters and legends.

The Social Studies department was the Flinstone Family and I was Baby Pebbles!

I LOVE Halloween sooooo verrrry much. I know that there are a lot of reasons not to celebrate it in schools, though the schools I’ve taught in have gone whole hog into Halloween, with costume contests (for students and teachers!) and a big dance thrown by the Student Council. In my classes I’ve always made the activities optional, though I realize in hindsight I could’ve been more in tune with how the ‘opt-out’ formula doesn’t work when kids are afraid of being different than their peers. When I return to the classroom, I think I’ll have different stations set up with equally-as-fun options. Also, probably a lot more discussions about cultural appropriation and stereotyping when it comes to costumes!

In a language class, depending on the target-language and the cultures that speak it, Halloween can also be a rich topic of discussion about how traditions change over time (see resources for advanced learners below), as well as attitudes towards the dead. Even if Halloween isn’t your thing, there is some fun in telling spoooooky stories at any time during the dark winter months.

In the interest of my target language, did you know that there is a France connection to the origin of Halloween? France and Belgium have traditionally celebrated All Saints Day, but have adopted more and more of the North American Halloween. There are many Halloween traditions in Quebec, much like the rest of Canada. Haiti has La fête des Guédé, a voodoo Day of the Dead, though I’ve read that many Haitian Christians participate as well.

Halloween Activities for Beginners:

Truly one of the best pumpkins I’ve ever carved… Jacques O’Lantern!

 For beginners, vocabulary is really the name of the game. Usually I start off with a ‘vocabulary scramble’ where I post pictures around the room with numbers on them. Students then walk around the room and write the number (and translation if they need it) on the lines. It gets everyone up and walking around, and if I have a particularly competitive class I’ll make it a race to the finish with a prize.

RESOURCE: Halloween vocabulary scramble

Vocabulary can then be reinforced with a vocabulary sudoku. This can be adapted to any language: just “search, find, replace” the vocabulary words so that “la lune” becomes whatever a moon is in your target language and then the whole thing works!

RESOURCE: Halloween Sudoku

I then add grammar practice to the newly gained vocabulary through a Halloween graphic. Again, this can be adapted to any new language if that language uses comparisons, superlatives, and/or prepositions. It’s just a Halloween-based image that has students making relationships between things (the bat is smaller than the witch; the bat is to the right of the witch). There’s a blank space in the middle for students to draw whatever vocab they want to add to the picture.  

I found this example in a book, took a picture, and wish I could attribute it to the original author. Does anyone recognize this? I think it was by the same publisher that does “Les 10”

RESOURCE: Halloween Prepositions & Halloween Prepositions Key

RESOURCE: Halloween Comparisons and Superlatives (this one I ended up hand drawing horns on the bald guy to be ‘the devil’)

I’ve always wanted to do this activity, but never got around to it, but having students create “wanted posters” for spooky characters would be, I think, a lot of fun. It’s especially helpful to reinforce descriptive vocabulary.

RESOURCE: Strange Creatures Wanted Poster

This is only for the ELL teachers out there, though the discussion question part could be modified for any language, and perhaps even the listening part if you were very keen, but I really enjoy discussions with students about UFOs! I feel like I learn a lot about them from how they would react to strange beings appearing on Earth. And if you really want to further the lesson, there’s a lot of interesting discussions to be had around modern immigration attitudes.

RESOURCE: ELL Aliens Activity

This is only for the French teachers out there, but I couldn’t let this list be without mentioning that the classic “C’est l’Halloween” by Matt Maxwell is on YouTube. It’s great for beginners as it has simple vocabulary, clear voice, and a chance to practice counting 1-18!

RESOURCE: C’est l’Halloween PPT (made by eTools for Teachers) & C’est l’Halloween lyrics 

Halloween Activities for more advanced learners:

Campfire stories with an iPad fire

Speaking: CAMPFIRE STORIES! Obviously, you can’t light a fire in a school, but my solution to that has been to borrow an iPad cart, put all the iPads to a campfire video, and we sit around them and tell stories! I’ve done this with legends and ghost stories I’ve given to students to read as a group, and then adapt into a quick skit to share the legends with the rest of the class. You could also do vocabulary improv prompts and have students present. Or a one-word-story… see how long you can keep the story going around the campfire!

Reading/Speaking: The history of Halloween is very interesting. As mentioned above, there’s also some interesting debate topics for students to hash out: should Halloween be banned from schools? What costumes are and are not appropriate to wear? What’s scarier: killer clowns or giant spiders?

RESOURCE: French history of Halloween

Listening comprehension: watch a video in the target language about the history of Halloween or particularly spooky stories in the target-language

Specifically for French teachers, did you know that TV5Monde has an amazing collection of Quebecois, Acadian and Indigenous legends? For a spooky vibe, you can use two of their ghosty legends: La Dame Blanch or Le beau fantôme du capitaine Craig.

RESOURCE: TV5Monde’s teacher’s guide or the worksheet I’ve adapted from those resources (Dame Blanche)

RESOURCE: TV5Monde’s teacher’s guide or the worksheet I’ve adapted from those resources (Capitaine Craig)

Writing: This is more spooky than directly related to Halloween, but I personally am a big fan of urban legends such as Big Foot, little green men, Loch Ness monster, weird crop circles, haunted dolls, etc. One assignment I’ve done with more advanced students is have them read newspaper and blog articles and then analyse them for style. Their assignment is then to write an article (EXAMPLE: Big Foot Article written by a student).

RESOURCE: Information sheet about the structure of an article in French (not my resource, created by Marie-France Rachédi)

RESOURCE: Urban Legends article assignment explanation and rubric (I will caution and say that this is an ooooollllldddddd assessment, so I do not assess exactly like this anymore, but it might be a helpful starting point if you want one)

RESOURCE: A list of blog sites (again, this is old, so they might not all exist anymore) of various urban legend phenomenon

Let me know in the comments what resources you like using around this time of year! Do you avoid Halloween, embrace it, or put your twist on it? Feel free to share!