Question Ball

I noticed as I clicked "new post" that this is my 100th post!  It's so awesome to see what this blog has not only done for me but for my readers as well.  It always makes me happy to see people posting in other places about using these resources/ideas and how they worked for them.

This is an idea I cannot take credit for, it's actually something my student teacher did.  Nonetheless, I just had to share.

I've definitely been pushing more for interpersonal proficiency in my room (something I really lacked in past years), so we have the students speaking quite often.  To mix it up a bit, my student teacher found a cheap $1 ball and wrote a bunch of relevant questions on it for our unit.

In the activity, the ball was thrown to a student.  Wherever their right thumb landed was the question they had to read out loud and respond to (en francais bien sur).  They really enjoyed it and it was fun with how random it was.

One way to even mix this up is to start by asking a student a question and THEN throwing it to them.  They must respond to the question first and then ask the question by their thumb to the next student and throw the ball.

Either way, it gets them speaking but is low pressure as it's just a simple question.  See the photo below for a photo of the ball.  Please excuse my chipping manicure ;)