It’s the end of the year. I’m tired. They’re tired. You’re tired. Ready for a ZERO prep game in which they do all the work?! I’m super excited to share Sabotage with you, a game I thought up last night and tried out this morning. It was a hit, even with my most difficult Spanish 1 class this morning. And it’s so great at the end of the year….you spent months giving them lots of rich input and now they get to dazzle you with their mad skills.

First, the back story: I had a teacher in middle school that LOVED talking about Native Americans. We learned quickly that if we asked questions and acted real interested, we could totally sabotage her English lesson. She’d spend the entire period answering all our questions about Native Americans and basically that’s how we spent the entire year of 8th grade English, distracting poor Ms. Rogan from her lesson plan. Basically that’s the idea of the game.

Set Up:

Explain the goal and the rules:

• The goal is for the students to ask as many questions as they can, with the goal of sabotaging or delaying my lesson plan. Their sabotage time will be tracked and compared to the other class’s times to determine the winner.
• Their questions must be asked in Spanish (unless you’re a German teacher or a Japanese teacher, of course).
• A single student can ask more than one question BUT they have to wait for X number of students to ask a question before they ask another one. Today I said they had to wait for 4 other students to ask before any student asked a second (or third question). For example Sandy is a rock star and could ask me one million questions in Spanish without breaking a sweat, hence this rule. She asked a question, then she had to wait for 4 other students to ask questions before she could ask another question. I think tomorrow I will announce they have to wait for 8 students between their questions, just to encourage more participation.
• After answering a question, I signal with my fingers, 5-4-3-2-1, indicating that they have 5 seconds to think of a new question. If no one can think of another question, the game is over.
• Annnnnnnd because really our goal is that they’re listening to and understanding lots of language, they better pay attention because there will be a listening quiz at the conclusion of the game. Additionally, the class average of the quiz + the sabotage time will determine the champion sabotage class. (So in addition to asking lots of questions, they also have to be sure to be listening carefully and signaling me if I’m talking too fast or am unclear, as per usual.)
• Students must remain engaged and listening the whole time….if I see students zoning out or distracted, game is over.
• Then I gave them a few minutes to brainstorm questions with a partner before the game got rolling.

To Play:

• Start a stopwatch on the board and get comfy.
• Students holler out (or raise their hands politely, your choice!) questions and the teacher answers.
• Will they have a zillion grammar mistakes in their questions!? Of course they will! Just go with it! I did a lot of rephrasing questions to ensure I was understanding their question, then I would answer their questions speaking slowly, using words they’re familiar with and gesturing like we do to aid in comprehension. Remember, the hidden agenda is the same for every class and every activity: load them up with loads of comprehensible input!
• I shouldn’t have to say this, but you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to answer! If you don’t want to tell them how old you are or the name of your grandpa, in slow and comprehensible language explain to them that it’s important to protect your grandpa’s identity because he he is a spy or you’re so old you can’t even remember. Or go ahead a lie to them. It’s fine. Today someone asked how old I was and I told them to guess. One boy (my new favorite) confidently guessed 23 and I confirmed that was indeed my age.
• After each question signal the 5-4-3-2-1 count down.
• Now….my kids lasted WAAAAAAAY longer than I was expecting (15 minutes in one class and 17 minutes in another class!) so if you feel like it’s taking too long, start signaling the 5-4-3-2-1 count down much faster!
• When they run out of questions, stop the stopwatch and record their time. I wrote each class’s time on the board, then covered it with a piece of paper, so that while they were playing they didn’t know the time to beat.

Here’s what it looked like:

Post Game Listening Quiz:

I gave them a simple 5 question True False quiz, based on the things I had told them during the game. Make it as easy as possible on yourself! To make it easy for me, I gave them a Lightning Fast Google Forms Quiz, which is basically a Google Form with the answers already programmed in so there’s nothing to grade….or you can have them take a quiz on scratch paper that you make up on the fly. It doesn’t really matter, you just need something to motivate them to stay engaged and paying attention, because if they’re dozing off in LaLa Land, none of your sweet, sweet CI is going to do them a lick of good!

Stay strong, my friends, the end of the year is very close! (Well, for some… I’m in school until mid June!😩Who’s with me!?)