Back in 2014, I wrote a post entitled The Value of Low-Tech in a High-Tech World. It’s over 10 years old at this point, but it still holds up. There are many reasons to incorporate low-tech activities into the classroom. This is especially true in the age of 1:1, where students spend the majority of the day looking at their school issued devices (and then, when they leave school, their phones). The 1:1 initiative is a great thing and greatly enhances my students’ learning, but screen breaks are necessary from time to time! In writing this post, I actually came to the conclusion that I need to incorporate these activities more frequently. For the purposes of this post, I am defining “low-tech” as an activity which does not require students to use their school issued device. In many of these activities, there is some information projected on the board, but the activity doesn’t just involve staring at the screen. There are a few “no tech” activities as well, in which students do not need to look at the board in the front of the room during the activity.
Living Sentences
My colleague Robin introduced me to this activity during my first year of teaching. Most recently, I blogged about it in the post “Old and New Things I Tried in 2023.” For this activity, the class is divided into two teams. The teacher prints out large words (one word or phrase takes up a whole piece of paper) that correspond to prompts shown on the board. Each student gets one word or phrase (some may get two). I also give one student on each team a whiteboard and marker to write prices for my food and meal-taking unit. The two teams each have the same words and phrases. When the teacher shows the prompt, the teams rush to form the sentence with their words in a designated spot in the room. If a student’s word is being used, they must stand in the spot and be part of the sentence. An example prompt is shown below, where the students must put the answer into a complete sentence and write the price as a number. The student holding up “2,75€” would have written that on a whiteboard.
Tarsia
I first learned about the Tarsia puzzle making software from Clare Seccombe years ago on her Changing Phase blog. Tarsia lets you make puzzles for students to put together. They can be tricky, so I have students do them in groups. On each edge of each square or triangle piece (except the outside pieces), there is a piece of information in French. On the edge that touches it is a corresponding piece of information. Some examples are questions and answers, numbers in word and number form, and dates and times in word and number form. It’s a great way to review vocabulary, and it’s low-tech and hands-on. Click here to read more about the activity and how to create your own in a post I wrote last year.
Write, Draw, Pass
I first blogged about this activity in the 2014 post, “Beg, Borrow, and Steal: 7 Great Ideas from Other Blogs.” I got the idea from Martina Bex‘s blog. If you’re looking for a fun activity with almost no prep work that gets students to practice their writing while having fun, look no further! Students write a sentence on a piece of paper, pass it to the person next to them who draws it, then folds the first sentence down and passes it to the next person, who writes a sentence based on the picture, and so on. It helps a lot to give example sentences. Martina even has a template you can download!
Charades and Simon Says
In 2016, I wrote a post about why I love charades. Some of my favorite reasons: It’s no prep and can be used at the end of class when you wrap up early, it’s a lot of fun when it’s made into a game, and it can be done entirely in French. Read the post for more ideas!
Sentence Strips
I resurrected sentence strips in 2023 after they had fallen by the wayside during covid and blogged about them in “Old and New Things I Tried in 2023.” There are many different ways to practice stringing a sentence together, but there is something about physically moving the words into place that I think is helpful for students. Although it takes more time to pass out and collect, and words inevitably get dropped on the floor or lost, students are much more engaged with the physical sentence strips than they are with any comparable computer-based activity. I also use it as a time to make my way around the room and help them. If they are missing a word, I create a space where the word should go and point to it. If they need to replace a word with something else, I pull the incorrect word out and point to the space. It’s easier to give feedback this way without using English than it is if they are using a computer. I also color code the words. Words in black are words that aren’t gendered, blue is for masculine, pink is for feminine, and purple is for non-binary. This is another activity that I do in groups.
Letting Students Channel Their Creative Side
While a lot of my assignments are done on the computer, I sometimes give students a chance to show their creative side, particularly through assignments done on paper. Sometimes I also provide the choice of doing an assignment on paper or on the computer. While coloring and making projects and assignments pretty is nice, in my class, we call that a “nice to have” and not a “need to have.” It doesn’t affect their grade, and it’s done outside of class unless they finish up early during provided in class time. Some of these assignments are: Drawing sentences I wrote in French, Colorful Creations (first blogged about here), Student preferences, Comic strip (first blogged about here), Family project, C’est moi, and Qui est-ce. I had to digitize many of these activities during covid but ultimately found that they worked better on paper.
7 Up
This is the type of activity I do when we have some sort of alternate schedule and I’m not seeing all classes or for a brain break. It’s like traditional 7 Up, but with vocabulary. The game starts with seven students, each of them holding a vocabulary item (I usually do school supplies, but anything you can tangibly hold will work). The rest of the class put their heads down on their desks and their thumbs up. The seven students go around and each pick one person whose thumb they tap with their object. Then they go back up to the front of the room. The students open their eyes and the seven students who were tapped try to guess which object they were tapped with instead of the name of the tapper. If they get it right, they get to replace the student at the front of the room. Once everyone’s done guessing, the next round begins.
Tic Tac Toe
This is a simple activity, and it lends itself to many topics. I’ve used it both with elementary and middle school students. I put an image (or a time, date, or number) in each box, and the students, with a partner, say what’s in the box in French and mark it with an X or an O. I make up a sheet for each pair with four games total, so they can keep playing, and it’s no big deal if some groups don’t make it through all four games.
Speed Friending
I first blogged about this activity in the post, “Activities That Promote Classroom Community.” Speed dating, or speed friending as I like to call it, is an activity that many teachers use to promote speaking. Two teachers I’ve learned about it from are Meghan Chance and the anonymous blogger Learning to Teach Also Teaching to Learn. Basically, students interview each other to find out who their ideal friend would be. What I have students do is fill in an interest inventory saying things they do and don’t do (this is sort of like a cheat sheet to help them speak during the interviews), then fill in the questions at the bottom with the same information from the top to ask their classmates. They put their classmates’ initials in the boxes and then check off if they answer the questions positively. I have students sit in twos, and after a few minutes of interviewing, they switch partners. We repeat this for as many rounds as we have time for. At the end of class students announce who their ideal friends are based on which classmate answered more of their questions positively.
Positive Adjectives
I first blogged about positive adjectives here, then again here when I shared how I did it virtually during Covid, and finally again in the post “Activities That Build Classroom Community.” Essentially, each student writes their name on a piece of paper and students take turns writing compliments in French to that student. They pass the papers in a circle until they get theirs back. In recent years, I have had students also write their pronoun so students would know which adjective form to use on them. The students end up with a nice souvenir and mood booster that they can hang onto!
Human Bingo
Human Bingo, or “Find Someone Who,” is a class activity teachers have been using for years as an icebreaker, but it can be used in the language classroom at just about any time of year. Simply make up a bingo-like board of various activities (or maybe not activities…any facts like what pets or siblings they have will do) and have students go around the room asking their classmates if they like to do those activities or have done them. You can make it a game by having the first student to get bingo win a prize. I do a 4×4 board so it is loto, the French version of bingo.
Find Your Match
This activity is a great way to start a lesson. Students get a piece of card stock, and they have to find the person with the corresponding card by speaking French. For example, a number, time or date written as words to be matched with the same, written as numbers. You can also have images, and students have to find the person with the exact same image as them without showing it to their partner. Joshua Cabral has a cool extension of this activity on his blog, World Language Classroom. In his variation, you put multiple images on a single card. Students have to find the person with the exact same sequence of images in the same order without showing their card to their classmates. Some cards will be very similar, so they really have to listen as they talk to their classmates.
Food and Other Hands-On Cultural Activities
Hands on cultural activities are an important part of the language classroom. Often times there is less target language use during these activities than during regular instruction, but these are the things that motivate students to want to dive deeper into the language and continue their studies, and there’s something to be said for that. Some of my favorite cultural activities include eating crêpes for Chandeleur, sampling traditional Cajun and Creole cuisine for Mardi Gras, making keychains with flags of French-speaking countries for National French Week (blogged about in Old and New Things I tried in 2023), reading and responding to letters from pen pals in France, making masks for Mardi Gras, decorating paper fish to stick on classmates’ backs for Poisson d’Avril, sampling dishes from all over the francophone world for National French Week, playing pétanque, sampling Christmas and Hanukkah dishes from France in December, and getting treats in their shoes for St. Nicholas Day. I blogged about many of these activities as well as others in the post, “Meaningful World Language Cultural Activities.”
Speaking Envelopes and Conversation Mats
It’s hard for novice level students to conduct conversations independently, so I help facilitate that by providing students with questions to ask each other. I often pass out envelopes that have questions in them. In groups of two or three, students take turns pulling the questions out of the envelope and ask them to their classmates. This is a simpler version of chat mats, which admittedly, I don’t do as much of (but it’s on my to-do list to start incorporating them). Amy Lenord has some awesome ones on TeachersPayTeachers!
Board Games
My colleague A.J. tipped me off to these 14 Printable Board Game Templates. I took one and made my own board game. Students have pawns (see above) that they move along the game board by rolling a die. When they land on an image, they have to say what it is in French. Some spaces tell them to move forward or backward several spaces. I did this with my elementary group a couple of years ago, but I have never done it with my middle schoolers. The topic of this board game is leisure activities. It does take a long time to make up, but once you make it, you have it for years to come! It’s great for the beginning of a unit when you are building up vocabulary.
Connect 4
I got this idea from French teacher Stephanie Bass’ blog. Students need to know numbers up to 12 to play this game. Students get into pairs and each pair gets a double-sided Connect 4 board with circles with various numbers up to 12 in them and a pair of dice. Students each need a different colored writing utensil (I usually provide these as well). Students take turns rolling the dice, adding the numbers together out loud, and coloring in a circle with that total number in it. The goal is to get four in a row. Students can block each other by coloring in a circle next to their opponent’s. I model this completely in French on the board beforehand. I imagine this could be adapted to other topics as well – a number corresponds to a vocabulary word and an image of that word is in the circle.
Cards and Poems for Special People
Having students make a card or a poem for a friend, family member, or school staff member is a great way to practice writing, and it is also a nice surprise for the recipient. For parents, it involves them in the learning process and helps them see what progress their child is making in the language classroom (which is really important!). In all of these cases, the students either write the English translation of the poem or card or they tell the recipient in person what it says.
In December, my students make cards (Christmas, Hanukkah, winter, New Year, etc. – whatever occasion they want) for a special person. Click here to see the list of vocabulary I give them. In recent years I have added more gender-inclusive language to the list, and language to acknowledge the different types of families that my students have (for instance, not just “Dear Mom and Dad,” but also “Dear Moms” and “Dear Dads”). I also give students the option of writing the card to an elementary teacher in one of our district’s six elementary schools, and I send them by interschool mail. The teachers absolutely love this, and sometimes they send a card back to me to give to the student or write an email saying how much it meant to them.
After students learn about adjectives and describing people and things, they write a poem about themselves. This is done on the computer, but then afterwards, students also make a poem on paper for a special person. In the poem about themselves they write “Je suis” and “Je ne suis pas” over and over again, so they see that in context. In the poem for someone else, they write “Il/Elle/Iel est” and “Il/Elle/Iel n’est pas” over and over again, so now they see different pronouns and a different verb form being used, without having to make a conjugation chart, which I avoid.
Finally, at the end of the year, when students are finishing up finals and I’m often looking to give them a little break and do something less rigorous, students make diamond poems for teachers. It’s called a diamond because it’s symmetrical. You start with the teacher’s name on the first line, on the second line write two adjectives, on the third line write three verbs, on the fourth line write two more adjectives, and finally, on the fifth line, write “My teacher.”
Story Time!
Reading to students in the target language is so important. I have a library of books that students can browse if they finish a task early, but I also like to take some time to read to them. Students love to gather on the floor like it’s Kindergarten story time as I read to them and pause to give them a chance to tell me what they think it means. I did this a lot with my elementary groups as well. Click here to read about my favorite books to read to students.
Rip Bingo
I first blogged about this activity in the post, “The FLES Chronicles Part VII: Revisiting Colors.” I don’t know where this game originated, but Martina Bex has a good description of it on her website. In her explanation, she uses a text, but it can also be played with vocabulary words. Students first get a strip of paper divided into five sections, as shown below. Students write five random colors in French, one in each box. Then, I display colors on the screen one at a time. If they have the color written on an end piece, they can rip it off. This continues until someone has ripped apart all their pieces. I have played this with my elementary and middle school students. I have only done it with colors, but it can be applied to lots of topics.
Color By Number
I first read about this activity on the blog Confesiones y Realidades. This is a fun activity to practice numbers. Above are a couple I did, one with numbers up to 49, and the other with numbers up to 100. Students get a blank grid, and the teacher calls out the numbers to the class in random order until it forms the desired shape. You have to plot it out yourself first (I do it in PowerPoint and copy and paste the little boxes and move them around. Then you have to write all the numbers down in a random order. I call them out to the class one by one. Towards the end, the students start to catch on to what the image is going to be, so I call on them to call out the remaining numbers. It takes awhile, especially with the more complex grids, like the one on the right, so make sure to set aside a good 15-20 minutes for this.
What are some of your favorite low-tech activities?
Liked this post? Sign up below to receive future posts by email!
