Games for the Spanish language class

Do you need to capture the attention of your students, are traditional classes too boring, is your students' motivation non-existent, are you unable to engage them? If you want to be a dynamic teacher and see motivation in your students' faces, here are some ideas for you to introduce in your classes.

Learning a language can sometimes be complicated or boring, especially with so much grammar. That is why introducing games in ELE classes can be a good way to turn heavy lessons into motivating and easy lessons. In addition, the introduction of games in the classroom is also a good way to break down the barriers of fear and tension that can form during the first few lessons when students do not know each other.

Games are also a good way to reinforce the grammatical explanations seen in class. Even for those students who have not grasped the concepts explained, they can understand them in a playful and visual way. 

What games can we use in the classroom?
The answer is all kinds of games, we can readapt and take any game and bring it to our classroom. We start by talking about traditional games such as "who's who?" here students put their skills to the test and learn and revise vocabulary for physical description and who has not made a word search to reinforce lexical skills, do you dare to create a "sink the fleet of verbs to work on the indefinite past tense"? As you can see, the range is very wide and we can use anything we already know and adapt it to our class.

The role of the teacher is very important as we mentioned at the beginning, transmitting good energy and positivity to the students is crucial to create a good atmosphere and to motivate the students. This breaks the ice between students and teacher and gives the students the confidence to speak and be themselves. For this, introduction games are important: games like the famous "Secret Santa" adapted to ELE classes are a way to get to know our classmates and students through curiosity and fun, so if you want students to become friends in the first session, prepare a good introduction activity. If you have a ball of wool, dare to make a spider's web, each student will introduce himself/herself and pass the ball of wool to his/her classmate, thus encouraging relationships between them.

Another very recurrent and attractive resource is the use of "story cubes" which can be used both to practice and reinforce tenses such as the past or the future or to work on vocabulary by imagining stories.
And we can't forget everything we can do online, there are many websites where we can find games for our students to play online and in a more autonomous way. Here are some websites for you to share with your students:
- Let`s Speak Spanish
- Rockalingua
- Word Toss
- Spanish-Games

We have been taught that to study a language we need to spend many hours in front of books to memorize words or to practice grammar but all this has changed because thanks to technology, we can use online games at any time of the day that can help us, for example, to memorize vocabulary in an entertaining and motivating way. We are fortunate to have the technology and applications to practice and maintain learning as a way to entertain ourselves in our free time constructively without much effort.

We encourage you to use play materials during lessons to reinforce content and also to recommend them to students for them to use autonomously.