Looking for a sequence of games that will support your Novice writers? Read on.

The background

So far in our “Would I want to study in a French school?” unit, we have listened to a variety of French students talk about their school days, analyzed our penpals’ school schedule, exchanged about our classes, and read about French schools, all the while capturing our learning in a Venn diagram using Write & Discuss. Phew. I now need a way for my students to 1) explicitly lift the vocabulary that has emerged from all this input and interaction, and 2) to start creating sentences with it. I also need for it to be fun and low -prep because we are in the last 5 weeks of school.

The idea

I decided to sequence two tried-and-true games in order to scaffold the writing process: game of six and write-draw-pass. Thanks, Martina Bex!

The process

1. First, I prepared a vocabulary sheet with the words/phrases that had appeared multiple times in the last few weeks. I am pretty confident my students can identify most of these words by now but I know they can’t write them on their own yet, which is totally normal.
2. Then, we played Game of Six with the vocab sheet. After reviewing the vocabulary, I asked them to highlight the phrases they need to keep working on.
3. Next, I prepared sentences about school such as “Chinese class starts at 9h25 but French class starts at 9h45”. They all followed the same structure: “abc but xyz”. This had two advantages: it made it easier for the students to illustrate and write the sentences, and it provided a model for writing a compound sentence.
4. Finally, we played Write-Draw-Pass with the sentences. It was hilarious and they did so well! I let them use their vocab sheet as a scaffold. I love the one where it started as “the girl likes her schedule but the boy does not like his schedule” and turned into “the girl likes the boy but the boy does not like the girl” .

To summarize, my students first saw/heard these phrases in natural contexts (texts and conversations). Then they interacted with the vocabulary in a more narrow way through strategically-sequenced games. All for the purpose of scaffolding their independent writing on this topic. I love it when games are both entertaining and serve a greater purpose!!

Let me know if you have any questions,