So, yesterday we used the free Make Dice Lite to practise making sentences about eating/drinking stuff in the Perfect tense using a time frame, a subject pronoun and a past participle. First, I projected my iPad on the IWB and had students make a 6 sided dice in French for each of the 3 sentence elements. They then quickly copied these in English. Ahhh, you say, what about the auxiliary verb? All will be revealed! This was the sequence of activities:
– roll the French dice, help each other translate then move to trying to beat your partner to say the English, first person to 10 points
– same activity, but with the English dice..of course this is a lot harder because they have to provide the correct auxiliary…they could have the verb paradigm in their exercise book to begin with, then withdrawn during the competitive bit
– Extension: students will add various components to the sentence ie what they ate, their opinion, and a justification
Advantage of using tech for this activity: students really engaged, massive random and repeated exposure to the full range of subject pronouns and auxiliaries, lots of French being spoken, fun. Plus, they can practise at home! The dice can be reused and cannot fall off the table!
Steve Morgan Training 