Desafío de Conversación

I love doing Conversation Challenges and most of my students like it as well. It's a quick and easy way to gauge your students understanding of the topic you are teaching or just how they are learning their second language in general.

At the start of class on Monday, I use ClassDojo to put them in random groups of 2. If I have an odd number, the odd person gets to sit out or join a group - their choice. Then they have 60 seconds (ish) to come up with a conversation. I have starter sentences on the board they can use if they want.

After the 60 seconds, I ask my Apple watch to choose a random number between 1 and however many groups there are and whatever number my watch chooses is the group that goes first. I use a stopwatch and that group chats for about 30 seconds. I usually give them very quick feedback or, like today, one of the groups said, "Donde estas vives en?" ('Where do you live' is what they were trying to ask but it's really wrong.) So I stopped and we did a quick 30 second lesson on why we don't need to use all those verbs in the same sentence! I reminded them that they are like toddlers learning to talk and they sound just as cute to me when they make mistakes as a 5 year old. =)

Then, I have my watch choose the second group, they talk to each other for 30 seconds or so, and then I either choose the winner, or if it's really close, I will have the class clap for which group they felt did the best. Of course, I give the winners jolly ranchers.

I love using ClassDojo for this because, just today (Feb 21), a group was chosen and one of the girls had gone last week as well. She said, "But, Profe, I went last week!" I reminded them all that it wasn't up to me who went but The Fickle Finger of Fate and that I knew she would do just fine.

It's quick enough, laid back enough, and random enough that my students seem to really enjoy it. It's not linked to a grade so that stress is taken off and, if I like their conversation, they win candy.