I’ve been doing variations of this activity for so long, I can’t even remember where I heard about it first, but I believe it was from fellow French teacher Susan Frost, retired from Lake George Junior-Senior High School here in New York. When you want to review new vocabulary but also spiral in some older vocabulary, this is a great little activity for the beginning of class. Basically, you provide students with some scenarios and they tell you if they are logical or illogical (logique/pas logique). Sometimes I use the words “probable” and “improbable” instead, depending on the scenario. Justin Slocum Bailey has a similar version he calls “Good Idea/Bad Idea” on his blog. One of the reasons I love this activity is because the illogical scenarios always get the students laughing. Sometimes I even act them out! Here are some examples of sets of vocabulary that lend themselves to this:
-Parts of the body and activities you can/can’t do with them (e.g. “Écouter avec la bouche”/”To listen with one’s mouth” = illogical, “Regarder la télé avec les yeux”/”To watch TV with one’s eyes” = logical)
-Weather/seasons and activities you typically would/wouldn’t do in them (e.g. “Je nage dans l’océean en hiver”/”I swim in the ocean in winter” = improbable, “Je mange de la glace en été”/”I eat ice cream in summer” = probable)
-Activities and various locations you typically would/wouldn’t do them in (e.g. “Je fais la sieste en classe”/”I take a nap in class” = improbable/bad idea, “Je fais la cuisine à la maison”/”I cook at home” = probable/good idea)
-For good idea/bad idea, you can pretty much think of any activity and have students vote on whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea. In some cases it might be a matter of opinion (e.g. “Je ne fais pas les devoirs”/”I don’t do my homework” = bad idea, “Je regarde les Yankees à la télé”/”I watch the Yankees on TV” = depends how you feel about the Yankees). I’ve also had students come up with their own in groups, but it can be pretty challenging for novice students.
You can use this activity to model and reinforce a variety of grammatical structures. Sometimes I use infinitives for the verbs if students have been learning to say what they like and don’t like to do, and sometimes I use conjugated forms. It can be a great activity to review recently learned vocabulary, but it makes a nice lighthearted activity for days when you don’t see all your classes (like a state testing day, a field trip, or a snow delay) and you need something to do with the other classes.
So how do students vote or indicate what they think the answer is? There are a few different ways that elicit different levels of engagement from students. Back in the day, I used to use Smartboard spinners to randomly pair the scenarios and students took turns spinning them (for instance, one spinner might have different body parts and the other would have different activities). Unfortunately, our school no longer subscribes to Smart Notebook software. Having the class call out answers is nice and quick, but it doesn’t hold all students accountable for participating. Having them do thumbs up or thumbs down is a little bit better, because students are expected to make a hand gesture as a means of participating, but these days I put them in Nearpod as quizzes or polls. This holds all students accountable to participate. Students also like to see the statistics as to how many voted for each, which Nearpod shows.
Have you ever done this type of activity? What are some of your variations on it?
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