I’m always looking for a really lucky student to take to Vegas, so I brought in some games to test their skills. No really, I wanted to teach some basic prepositions of location and thought of a friendly little game we play at parties called LRC. Students learn how say “left, right, center, and stay” from playing the game. My students love this game because it’s fast-paced, simple, and fun.
Here are the basic rules to the game: Normal Rules The main tweak I make is that they have to say what they are doing in Spanish. If they don’t, another student can call them on it and take one of their chips. Sometimes I use candy like Smarties or Jolly Ranchers instead of the plastic chips. They love winning that pot! They usually share with the group anyways, so everyone wins.
LRC Cheat Sheet
They beg me to play any time we have extra time in class. You want to keep learning? Ok!!
After playing and at the end of class, I asked them to describe their bedroom (vocab we started learning this week). Their proficiency levels shot up just knowing these words! And it was more interesting to read. Tomorrow I will read these, and they will draw what they hear…
Another version!
This one was created to practice giving directions so it uses “straight ahead” instead of “center” and it uses regular dice. The download has a few versions: English, Spanish, French, German, and a blank.
Update:
Thanks to Amy for the great idea of buying blank dice and making our own by writing: I D C . . . !
I love this idea. I just played a game yesterday with the LRC idea: Barrel of monkeys. I made monkey cards with fill in the blank verb problems. The students took turns choosing a card. If they could fill in the blank (to group’s satisfaction), they kept the card. If they got a card that said “a la izquierda” or “a la derecha” they had to give all the cards they’d earned to the person on their left or right. If they got a “platanos” card, they could steal the cards from any player.
I like the dice game! I also like the layout of your worksheet. I really enjoy this blog!
Nice variation Susan! I will be trying that.
NO LRC DICE??? You can also use regular dice. I put this on the board as a key:
1 = se queda
2 = se queda
3 = se queda
4 = a la izquierda
5 = a la derecha
6 = al centro
Kara the akinator… you read my mind. I was thinking about how I could do this in class but don’t have the dice! Love it – I’ve been wanting to try this for so long! Thanks for the reminder!
=D I do have lots of regular dice!
Love the Right-Left-Center idea! Thank you!
Can you be more specific about what the students are saying as they pass the dice? Are they working on current vocabulary or just saying something in Spanish? I’m a little confused on that part. Also, if you make your own, did you use I for izquierda and D for derecha?
Hi Lori! They are only saying the phrases in the TL that are in the image (to the left, to the right, center, stays). In the traditional game, you don’t have to say them out loud as you play; that’s the twist that I add so they were practicing these “locations/directions.” Here’s a video of a family playing the traditional way. I don’t use dollars in class, but you can see it being played. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGJ4tx4Wz9I
And if you make your own – I for izquierda / D for derecha / C for centro / and 3 dots.
Yup that’s what I did. The “I” looks like an”H” sideways, guess I should leave the top and bottom lines off of the rest of them.
Adds an extra challenge. 😉