Spanish: Estereotipos

Hello everybody, Claudia here,

When teaching about stereotypes I have found this guessing game quite fun. What you need to do is get your students in small groups of 2 or 3 people. Have small pieces of paper with different stereotypes written on them.

Once the students are arranged in groups you go around each group and put one of the papers with the stereotype on each students' foreheads, post-it notes work pretty good for this.

Then, in each group the students have to describe the stereotype on one person's forehead so that he or she can guess which one it is. They continue until everyone in the group has guessed his or her stereotype.

This activity is really fun for students and can be adapted to many other topics. One variety I have also used is to have the person with the paper be the one asking questions trying to get information to guess his or her identity. You can also use pictures of famous people, city names or pictures, animals, etc. In other words, you can easily adapt this game for any level.

I hope you try it out and let me know how it works for you!

Group Activities: Guessing Game - Two Truths and a Lie Variant

Hello all, Chris here.

Today I would like to share a fun group activity which allows you to focus on some cultural and historical elements as well. Our students are already aware of several famous Germans, both current and historical figures. Throughout the typical sequence of language courses they come to know several more. I created this guessing game to serve as both a refresher and review activity to see how many famous Germans people could come up with.

To begin the activity I had each student decide on a famous German (past or present) and to write down three clues describing that person. To make the activity a little more challenging I instructed the students that two of their clues should be true while one should be false.

Once all of the students were finished I divided the class randomly into four groups. The game starts when a student from group 1 reads their three clues to the rest of the class. Each of the other three groups has one chance to guess at the mystery person's identity. If a group guesses correctly, award them a point. Proceed this way for the remaining groups and then repeat the process. Once all students have finished tally up the points to see which group has won.

To add a little bit of strategy to the game, you could have students only read one clue at first and then give the other groups a chance to guess. Should they answer correctly with just one clue then award them 3 points. If no group wants to wager a guess then have the student read a second clue. Again, allow the other groups to make a guess if they want to. If any group answers correctly award them 2 points. Finally, if no group has answered after two clues, then have the student read the final clue and award a single point for any correct answer.

This activity can be very entertaining and forces the students to do a little bit of research and features both a written and oral component. It is also easily adaptable for any language and level.

I hope you have found the above activity to be useful! Questions and comments welcome!