Running Dictation

First at all say to you that is an activity that you can do in any moment of the year. You only will need a piece of paper and think about 5 different sentences related with the theme or unit you are explaining. The main idea is students work their second language therefore you will have to prepare the sentences in the language you interest. For example, in my case, I prepare the sentences in english because They speak valencian or spanish.

After you have the sentences you have to do groups about 4-5 students. The system is very easy : You will be out of the class and one person of each team will go where you are and you'll show them the first sentence. They will have to memorize and come back into the class and say the sentence to their partners. You have to think about long and interesting sentences ( grammar, spell, vocabulary..) and probably this student have to do many trips to finish to say all the sentence to their partners. 

When all members of the team have the sentence another partner will have to go out and start the same method with the second sentence. All persons of the each group have to go out and work with a sentence so it's necessary same number of sentence that members of the teams ( If in any team there is not enough members one of them could do 2 sentences ).

The winner is the team which all members have written all the sentences and these are good in less time.

This activity can spend about 20-30 minuts related with the age of the students but is a good way to study some parts of the subject and apend a funny time with the students.

Here you can see one example of these sentence related with the unit of the Roman Empire in 1s ESO ( 11-12 yeras old )

• 1.       In ancient Rome, the family was under the authority of the father, or pater familias.He had power of live and death.

• 2.       Insulae were three or four storey apartament buildings where less wealthy famílies rented flats.

• 3.       Domus were individual houses of wealthy famílies.

• 4.       A Roman breakfast was made up of bread, dates, cheese and olives

• 5.       Social Science is the best subject in the Institute. I Love it and I want to pass the next exam.

Advantages team job

Sometimes I forgot students level, I mean, They are in 1st o 2nd ESO and only are 11 or 12 years old. If I remember when I was younger than now I can modify my classes  so I can feel myself  like them. 

When I do this I readapt my contents, my activities and, besides, I enjoy more my job while I look at the students and how They work the subject by themselves. Obviously anything has positive and negative aspects and this is not different. At first I 'd like to explain negative aspects even though I'm going to focus in positive aspects. The negative would be : 

- Speak aloud

- No all people will work

- A lot of time to organizate and prepare exposure.

Otherwise the aspects positive are : 

- Integration

- Collaboration

- Find leaders in the group

- Learning by themself

- Social skills

I recommend to you do this activity sometime in any unit of your book. If you do it you will see all these advantages.

I hope your opinion :)