Trapdoor

I first heard of this activity during my PGCE (although unfortunately can’t remember the name of the lady!) and it’s been one of my favourites ever since...  

This is a great way of practising both speaking and listening skills and every time I’ve used it the students have loved it!

You create a text made up of several sentences, some of which have three possible endings. You then decide which is the correct ending and the students have to guess which one by reading the text out loud.

Example used with KS4 Spanish on holidays:

The students take it in turns to read out the text and if they guess the answer correctly, they can continue to the next one. If they guess it incorrectly, another person has to have a go but from the beginning. So it means that they all have to listen to each other carefully so that they don’t say the same incorrect answer twice. And there’s so much repetition that it helps the pronunciation too.

When I’ve finished we normally go through the text and discuss the meaning and say what’s good about it (adjectives etc.) and how it could be improved (other tenses etc.). You could also get students to pick their own answers and play in pairs.  

D.