Let Them Play Pictionary!

Ever since the elections have been over, I have struggled to find something “fun” for my students to do in class. My main struggle? Getting them to speak English instead of French. Since the juniors and seniors have an oral exam at the end of the year, I have been trying to imitate what the exam will look like. Because the exam will either have a picture or a written document, I usually bring in either a cartoon or an interesting newspaper article, and we discuss it as they would during the exam. Seems like a novel idea, except for the fact that they tend to drift back to French after the first sentence or two. And that would be fine, I suppose, if the exam were in French. But it’s not.

Despite my attempts to tell them that they will not pass the exam if they only speak in French (and, if they don’t pass, they may be held back a year), they still continue to avoid English as much as possible. This frustrated me, so I decided that I needed to give them a break and do something fun.

Hence the introduction of Pictionary into the classroom.

I chose words that they would know but that would be funny to see them draw – words like, “sports car,” “lion,” “dinosaur,” “ear,” and “sunglasses.” Sure enough, the game was a hit. The first class that played was standing on top of chairs and desks within a matter of minutes, yelling the words in English so loud that I worried another teacher would come in and tell us all to settle down.

Of course, the competing teams would yell at each other in French (“That’s not what that is!” “Look! We’re ahead of you!”), but their answers were all in English. I had finally succeeded in a) getting them to speak (mostly) in English, and b) getting them to have fun in class.

Next, I’m going to try Family Feud, and see how that works out. Then maybe Scattergories.