As busy Spanish teachers, you know we love activities that are easy to prep for and super versatile. I love using the same game multiple different ways; think of all the time saved because students already know the process / procedures for play!
Enter…tic tac toe.
When I think back to my first experiences with the tic tac toe game as an educator, I see my high schoolers working in pairs, conjugating verbs to capture their space on the board. It’s a decent way to practice the conjugation skills in isolation, I suppose. But, I’ve come to learn that tic tac toe can be so much more than that!
Depending on when I’m using the game within a unit, I’ll use it for different purposes. We can start super simple with actions or single word recall and move all the way to practicing the question/answer process or sentence creation!
Playing this game with my elementary Spanish classes
Whole group & With Partners
In addition to the variety of ways we use content with this game, I also like to switch up the format of the game. I usually start out with a whole group game–clase vs. Sra. This can be a quick game at the start of a lesson or to wrap up a lesson (anyone else always overplan just in case?). OR, it can be one of the main activities of the lesson. If that’s the case, I often model the game by playing with the whole group first and then I send them to work in pairs.
In a normal year, I give a pair of students a sheet of paper with 4 tic tac toe boards on it for partner play. They can mark off x’s and o’s with different colored markers as they play. This year, I’ve modified for “socially distanced” play. Students sit at distance and mark both the x’s and o’s on their own paper. In theory, it helps us stay a bit safer.
Okay, how do I switch up the content with this game?
At the very start of the unit, I encourage you to only play as a whole group. This allows the teacher to model and provide all kinds of input. I put up a board with just images relating to our new unit of study. Students can choose their spot on the board by doing the action for it (if there is one), saying the Spanish word, or coming to the board to point at the spot they would like. If they didn’t produce the word, I model it and encourage them to repeat if they are comfortable. I never force students to repeat words in Spanish.
Later on in a unit, I love to pair this game with a grammar structure. Sometimes I include an image along with a sentence in each space. In that case students simply read the sentence for the spot they want. Other times I continue to use a board with just images but encourage students to produce a sentence.
For example, my first graders recently learned to describe rainforest animals. We used the same tic tac toe boards from earlier in the unit (just images) but now they were able to describe the color or size of the animal instead of just saying the animal name.
Later in the same unit we snuck in talking about our opinions of the animals and used “me gusta” or “no me gusta” during the game.
Lastly, depending on the level of my students, I like to add in the question / answer process during tic tac toe. For example, my third graders are learning about different foods in the 5 food groups. We played tic tac toe with the question, “¿Cuál fruta es?” and answer, “Es una manzana.” This simply encourages them and gives them practice speaking in sentences.
It might sound like we play tic tac toe all day / every day in my class. BUT! it’s just one of many different strategies to keep my students engaged and using Spanish. I love to switch things up on them. They’re always excited to see which way we’ll practice Spanish when I roll my cart into their room each lesson.
Which version of tic tac toe do you want to add into your lesson sometime soon?
