Title: Can you find the color?

Topic: Colors

Level: Novice

Focus Age Group: 6 years and up

National Standards Goals:

Communication   Culture   Connections   Comparisons   Communities

Communicative Mode:

Interpersonal   Interpretive   Presentational

NJ Cumulative Progress Indicators:

• 7.1.5  Provide and obtain information on familiar topics
• 7.1.7  Identify some common and distinct features such as parts of speech and vocabulary, among languages

Timeframe: 10 minutes of each 15-minute class period for a week.

Description of Task:

• Vamos a identificar los colores jugando tresillo. (Let's identify colors playing Tic-tac-toe.) (Teacher draws a tic-tac-toe board on the blackboard as she tells the students in Spanish that they are going to identify the colors by playing tic-tac-toe and numbers the nine spaces with any pattern of numbers she wants the students to practice.)
• Hacemos dos equipos. (We will divide into two teams.) Ustedes son los X. (You are the X.) Ustedes son los O. (You are the O.) [The teacher makes the X and O symbols on the board or in the air as she speaks to the children in the target language and points to indicate the teams.] The teacher gives a bowl of real or plastic fruits to the first team and says to the first student, "¿Cuál es amarillo?" (Which one is yellow?) When the student finds a piece of yellow fruit she says, "Levántelo por favor." (Pick it up please.) She then moves on to the other team and asks about a different fruit. ¿Cuál es roja? (Which one is red?)
• The teacher could also ask ¿De qué color is la naranja? (What color is the orange?) to which the student would respond with the correct color.
• When the student identifies a fruit with the correct color, the teacher says, "Sí. Es roja." (Yes. It is red.) or Sí. La manzana es roja. (Yes. The apple is red.) Then she asks "¿Dónde quiéres que ponga tu X?" (Where do you want me to put your X?)
• The student will respond with the number of the space he or she wants to put the X in by saying: siete (seven) or en siete (in seven). Or whatever the number of that space is.
• The game continues until one team wins, the two teams tie, or time runs out. The teacher can say: Ganaron. (They won.) or Nadie ganó. (No one won.) Or Parece que nadie va a ganar. (It looks like no one is going to win.)

Materials Needed:

• Blackboard, dry erase board, or large piece of paper
• Chalk, dry-erase markers, or permanent marker
• One or two bowls of fruit (plastic or real)

Teacher Notes:

• This task is designed to assess the student's ability to identify colors. They will also be demonstrating their ability to identify numbers. The numbers to be assessed can change each time the game is played.
• Students are also demonstrating their comprehension of the question word ¿Dónde? (Where?) and the verb ganar (to win).
• The task is a good warm-up activity when moving into a lesson where the students will be describing objects, animals, etc.
• Other language can be practiced and assessed with this activity.

Scoring Criteria:
Teacher will reproduce an assessment chart with colors or other language functions being assessed across the top. She will focus on five or so students a day.

Adaptations:
This may be done as a pair activity with color wheels or self-made flashcards provided for the pairs. For a class of 22 students you would need 11 color wheels or bowls of fruit and a ditto of a tic-tac-toe board or boards. The teacher could call out the colors or fruits or students could test each other. The teacher could also enlist the help of a heritage speaker to develop an audio cassette version of the game.

The same activity can be done with leaves in the fall, flowers in the spring, balloons, animal, and other language functions to be assessed.

Rebekah Villano
Littlebrook Elementary School
39 Magnolia Lane
Princeton, NJ 08540
609.924.7925