Review woes

Since my students have a chapter test next week, they started review today after their quiz.  And, because we're always trying to keep things interesting, we had them playing charades with the vocabulary words.  And, as expected, a few got into it and most wanted nothing to do with it (heaven forbid, they might look silly in from of their peers).

I was surprised, however, to see how many teenage girls were willing to lay on a dirty classroom floor once they were dragged to the front of the room in order to portray the word for "sunbathing."  They were some the funniest because the motivation (total embarrassment and uncoolness) for not acting out the word at all became the motivation for doing the most accurate charade they could so that someone would guess more quickly, thus ending their uncoolness.

But there still were those who refused to participate.  They got up to the front of the room, whined, and said they didn't know what to do, thinking that would get them out of the game.  You can imagine their disappointment when they discovered they had to stand up there pouting until they participated.

All in all once they got into it (and discovered that we only had time for about 5 minutes) it ended up being good for them, and they were even spitting out words they learned the previous year which is always a good thing.