End of the Year Option 2: The Word-Off
This project is one of the best things I stumbled upon in my years of teaching World Language. One, it gives us something fun to do and a big shared class goal to work towards, and two, it helps me integrate with my vocabulary-list-loving colleagues. There is one important caveat here. The Word Off is NOT a language acquisition activity. But it does make memorizing lists of words a whole lot more fun! Basically, the Word-Off is like a spelling bee, but instead of spelling, students will translate vocabulary items from a list that they have worked with for a few weeks. Where do you get the vocabulary items? You can either get then from the required vocabulary lists that your department wants you to teach, or from a list that you brainstorm with your students. Here is an example of a list that my friend Elena brainstormed with her students at Madison High School. They first listed categories of vocabulary words and then gave her lists of words within those categories that they wanted to learn.
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