As much as we plan out our lessons in detail, we sometimes have a few minutes we need to fill. It’s not long enough to start a new topic, but we can (and should) fill it with meaningful activities. Check out this list of French vocabulary time-fillers so you won’t always end up playing battleship and tic-tac-toe!
French Vocabulary Time-fillers
I’ve put together this list with a focus on practicing vocabulary, but you could adapt some of the time-fillers to other subjects, such as Math.
The list is in no particular order.
A good practice is to vary the activities you do from time to time because you want to keep your students on their toes, engaged and challenged!
- Unscramble words: have students work in pairs. Student A scrambles the letters of a word you’ve been working, writes the letters on a piece of paper (or mini whiteboard), and shows to Student B. Student B tries to guess the word. They take turns scrambling and guessing the words. Depending on your students’ age, you might want to model how to scramble a word.
- Complete the sentence: grab a book and start reading a sentence aloud. Stop right before the end of the sentence and have students complete it. You can have them write on mini whiteboards and then show or read their guesses. You can also make up sentences and not necessarily read from a book. Silly sentences are fine as long as students spell and use words correctly.
- Exit tickets: have students complete exit tickets by asking them to list words they learned that day in class, or other vocabulary related question.
- Guess what’s in the box: this one actually requires a bit of preparation. You need a box and an object to keep in the box (you could just grab something out of your handbag). Students have to guess what’s in the box by asking questions about the hidden object. You can set a limit to the number of questions or not. It’s up to you and to the time you have to play this game.
- Speed writing: you say a word and students need to write it down once on their notebooks or mini whiteboards. When you say “Go!”, they have to copy the words as many times as they can within the time limit you decide, say, 1-2 minutes. The student who writes the word the most times correctly is the winner of that round and get to write with a special marker the next time you play this game.
- ABC challenge: choose a topic and have students say words related to the topic in alphabetical order. For example, let’s say the topic is “spring”. Students (one at a time) would say: “l’abeille”, “la balançoire”, “le cerf-volant”, etc. If saying the words in alphabetical order gets too tough, you could write the letters of the alphabet on the board. Then, you could have students come up and write one word for each letter, but not necessarily in alphabetical order.
- Word domino: write a word on the board, then have a student come up to the board and write a new word that begins with the last letter of the first word. Next, another student comes up and writes a new word beginning with the last letter from the second word, and so on. If your students need an extra challenge, have them write words that all belong to the same topic, e.g. spring, animals, countries, etc.
- What’s the category: there are two ways of playing this game. Option 1: choose a group of students based on something they all have in common and ask them to stand up together, e.g. they are all wearing blue sneakers, or all their first names begin with the same letter, etc. Don’t tell students what the kids in the group have in common–let the class guess what the “category” is. Option 2: ask students to make groups of 3 people. Now ask each group to find things they all have in common, such as “they all have pets”, “they all love the color red”, etc. The group that finds the most things in common wins and the prize can be leaving for recess one minute before the others 😉
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French Vocabulary Time-fillers: lists
Getting students to come up with vocabulary lists is a great exercise because they get to use the words they’ve learned and put them into different categories.
There are many things to list. Students can list:
- words that begin with a letter
- animals that live in the farm (or in the zoo, in the ocean, etc)
- words that include a sound, such as “ou”
- words that rhyme with another word, such as “cochon”
- all the colors they know, or all the colors they can spot in the classroom, or things that are a certain color, or the colors they are wearing
- cities they know, the states in your country, countries that speak French, planets in the solar system, etc
- all Pixar movies, Disney characters, books they’ve read, etc
- all fruits they’ve eaten, vegetables, ice cream flavors, pizza toppings, etc
- professions they know, kinds of transportation, etc
- things you can find at the circus, at the zoo, in the classroom, at a hospital, in the kitchen, etc
There are also many ways to “disguise” the list making so that it doesn’t always feel like they’re only writing lists.
You might want to add a time constraint to keep them challenged, i.e. tell them they have 3 minutes to write as many words as possible.
You could have them work in pairs or small groups.
It could be a whiteboard race. Select a category of things students need to list. Divide the class into 2 teams. One person from each team goes to the board at a time to add a word to the list. Set a time limit and have them take turns going up to the board. When time’s up, count how many correct words each list includes. Give them 2 points for each correct, non-repeated word (a word that is not on both lists) and 1 point for repeated words. The winning team gets to choose the category (from options you give) the next time you play the game.
French Vocabulary Time-fillers: the Classics
Last but not least, play battleship, tic-tac-toe, pictionary, charade, and other all-time classics!
I have nothing against these and have actually played them a lot in the classroom. However, make sure you don’t always play the same game.
Make them a once-in-a-while activity so your students will always be interested and surprised.
And a super important tip: make sure students know the educational purpose of any of the activities described here.
You want them to enjoy the activity, but you don’t want them thinking it’s just a game.
State the purpose and value of the time-filler: “we’re playing this to review spring vocabulary”, “we’re making lists to expand our vocabulary”, ” we’re unscrambling words so that our minds are always working on words”, etc.
So that’s the list of French vocabulary time-fillers I have for you today!
What other short vocabulary activities would you add to this list? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you for stopping by. Merci!
Lucy 🙂
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